


The Night We Never Met

by goodoldfashioned



Category: RedLetterMedia RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anonymous Sex, Chance Meetings, Emotionally Repressed, Happy Ending, M/M, Romantic Angst, Sex Club
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-14
Updated: 2020-06-15
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:54:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 55,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24725593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goodoldfashioned/pseuds/goodoldfashioned
Summary: Jay is a member of an anonymous sex club. Mike is a VCR repairman with a big dick. His voice sounds so familiar.
Relationships: Mike/Jay
Comments: 43
Kudos: 80





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Coq](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Coq/gifts).



> This is a gift for my beautiful friend Coq who has been immeasurably important to me when it comes to encouragement and enthusiasm for this ship and also just the spirit of friendship in fandom and why it means so much to me in general, I adore you eternally bb and hope you will enjoy this!! <3 <3 It's also my TWENTIETH RLM fic ahhhh what is happening, so it's extra special, and I'm so happy to dedicate it to you. 
> 
> This is about the Half in the Baaaaaaaag characters and their world only. All the backstory stuff is made up for the characters in the fic, based on nothing. Cheers!
> 
> *

Still in the Uber, two blocks from the club, Jay’s heart rate picks up. He keeps his eyes on his phone and feels his face flush, as if his disinterested Uber driver might have noticed that he’s getting excited about approaching his drop off. The club is discreet, extremely exclusive, and there’s very little chance the driver knows it exists. Jay still gave him the address of the bar across the street instead of his actual destination. Just in case.

In case what? He’s not sure. He’s not humiliated by his interest in this place the way he once was, but part of the appeal is that nobody knows he comes here or what he does once he’s inside. He keeps his sex life neatly contained to one night here every two weeks, and one of the things he loves about it is the sterility of his routine. Dating people was messy. Trying to explain to them what he likes in bed was a nightmare. At the club, it’s all there in his profile, neatly spelled out. The other members are vetted carefully and cleared by the club on all levels before appointments are made. Legally binding documents are signed to ensure everyone’s safety. It’s the kind of mature, organized exchange that Jay always wanted sex to be and never thought he’d get before he found this place. 

After exiting the Uber he heads toward the bar, watching from the corner of his eye to make sure the driver is out of sight before he doubles back and walks across the street to the club. An old girlfriend told him about this place shortly after his thirtieth birthday, and he’s coming up on a full decade of having patronized it. He walks in with a confidence that he wasn’t able to muster for even the first few years of coming here, enjoying the familiar eucalyptus and lavender scent of the clean but dimly lit lobby area, where he nods to the sharply dressed security guard who accepts his driver’s license and membership card for a perfunctory examination. Jay doesn’t know the man’s name, and they never speak beyond the most basic greetings, but Jay is a regular and this guy has worked here for years. For all Jay knows, the guard could be one of the men who has anonymously fucked him beyond the lacquered black door at the back of the lobby that leads to other, darker rooms. He supposes the club probably has a policy disallowing employees to be members, and shakes off a sense of premature arousal as he walks up to the black door, which opens for him after the guard mutters his okay into the mouthpiece on his suit jacket’s lapel. 

Jay has a well-honed ritual upon entering the club, and his days of getting a boner as soon as he walks through the door are long past. He’s nearly forty, for one thing, and it’s better to approach the initial stages of this process with calm detachment, so the ramp up to what’s ahead doesn’t leave him overly excited and too quickly spaced out. He enters the locker room, grateful as ever that his profile specifies he needs privacy in this area before and after appointments. He adheres to a strict twenty minute pre and post appointment prep and recovery time, so that he doesn’t have to interact with anyone but the guard upon arriving and departing. 

The locker room is lit softly like the lobby, providing an atmosphere of relaxed intrigue, and each locker is made of sturdy, polished wood, floor to ceiling. Jay undresses methodically and puts on the dark grey robe and slippers that will be all he wears once he leaves this area. The robe is short, barely brushing over the tops of his thighs, and it looks good on him, but nobody he fucks here will actually see him in it. He’s always naked by the time they arrive in his designated room. 

Tonight he’s been assigned room 7, per the text he got when he confirmed the appointment. He doubts that this place has many other customers who are so precisely regular as him, though there may be a few. As much as the neatness of the place and its policies appeal to him, so does the routine of it. He can go two weeks without needing sex with another person. He’s trained himself to keep to this schedule and it works for him, allowing him to focus on other things during the week and not cloud his head with the kind of tedious personal life bullshit that plagued him in his twenties. He gets why some people want that kind of companionship, but he’s tried it and it’s not for him. This is his thing: the club, the appointments, the dark rooms, and the swift getting down to business once he’s closed up inside one with another person he’ll never lay eyes on or exchange real names with. He can’t explain it to the people in his life who don’t know what to make of his persistent bachelorhood, but he doesn’t owe anyone an explanation. He pays his dues at the club, it suits his needs, and he gets on with his life when he’s done here, week to week. 

He has ten minutes to spend in the spa area without the risk of running into the person whose allotted pre-appointment time begins twenty minutes after his own. Some people don’t mind that kind of encounter; some probably even seek it out, but Jay just wants to be alone until he’s blindfolded and closed up in his assigned room, awaiting whomever the club has assigned to share his appointment there. He has a list of requirements for partnering that don’t include sex or gender but which specify what he won’t do, the word he’ll say if he wants to quit, and what he likes best. Having his likes listed on his profile doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll get to enjoy any of them, and sometimes the appeal of this is being denied them, which is also noted in his profile, every quirk of his unique sexual preferences outlined for his partners to review and adhere to, if they want to be welcomed back. After ten years, he’s a valued member of the club and his satisfaction as a customer is particularly important. Being attractive helps, too. He wasn’t, when he first started coming here, and he’s noticed that he’s been matched with a better caliber of partner since he got in shape and made other physical improvements over the years, as he started making the kind of money that allowed him to do so. 

The attractiveness of his partners is irrelevant, as he’s always blindfolded. They never are. They are in control, completely, and Jay is only in the sense that he can safe word out, but that’s usually not an issue. He’s much more durable than he looks, and he measures the quality of his partners according to criteria that has nothing to do with what they look like or what anatomy they possess. It’s a particular kind of attitude that he’s seeking when he comes here, some better able to pull it off than others: in charge but not overcompensating for anything, creative but not corny, and a certain something that he couldn’t describe well enough to list it on his profile but which boils down to a kind of arrogant confidence that gets his dick hard while he lets the person he’s with take him down a peg or ten. 

He finishes showering and has a short stint in the sauna, watching the timer carefully. When his twenty minutes of alone time is almost up, he heads to room 7, the backs of his legs starting to tingle with anticipation. He enters his personal four digit code on the door’s lock and licks his lips when it pops open for him. He’ll be alone inside for at least a few minutes more, but he feels like he’s on stage already as he enters and hangs up his robe inside the seamless panel in the wall that’s hanging open for him. He puts the slippers inside as well, goosebumps racing over his freshly scrubbed skin once he’s fully naked. Finally, he takes the soft leather blindfold from its spot on the little shelf inside the wall panel and shuts the panel, which seems to disappear into the dark wall as if it doesn’t exist, taking Jay’s paltry clothing and almost the last of his agency along with it. He swallows and turns for the only object currently visible in the room: a simple wooden chair placed directly in the center. 

There are other objects in here, hidden in other wall panels. Only the person who enters to partner with him has access to those. Jay just has his blindfold, and he walks to the chair, taking a seat there before sliding the blindfold on over his eyes. He feels newly naked as soon as his vision is gone, and his nipples are hard in the slight chill of the room. His profile asks that his room always be set to 65 degrees: just enough to make him shiver a little while he waits, his cock already twitching for the feeling of the wooden chair under his bare ass. 

Some partners make him wait for what feels like an eternity. It can be an arousing part of this game, but Jay gets impatient and usually gives less to the people who aren’t as eager to begin this as he is. Maybe they don’t wait two weeks between sessions, or have other kinds of sex between visits to the club. Jay can’t relate. By the time he’s sitting in this chair, blindfolded and trying not to chew his lips like a nervous kid, he’s waited long enough. 

The door opens, and Jay experiences the moment of quick-flash panic that still shoots through him every time. He likes it. It’s part of the thrill, and his dick starts to fill out as he listens to his partner walk inside. He can never be entirely sure at first, but he thinks he can tell by the heavy gait that it’s a man tonight. 

“Hello,” his partner says when the door is shut. He has a man’s deep voice, and there’s a flicker of amusement in his tone that sets Jay pleasantly on edge, as if he’s being laughed at a little. “You awake in there?” the man asks, stepping closer.

Jay swallows. So this guy wants to talk. It’s fine; sometimes the things that are said to him are the hottest part of all of this.

“I’m awake,” Jay says, feeling a little stupid when the guy just hangs back and doesn’t prompt him further. “Hi.” 

“I got your name from your profile,” the guy says, meaning the fake name Jay uses here: Dex, a cheesy one he kind of regrets choosing ten years earlier but has also grown attached to. “I take it they didn’t give you mine?”

“Are you new here?” Jay asks, alarmed. 

The guy snorts. “You can tell?”

Jay tries not to let his shoulders drop in disappointment. New people can be good, but this guy sounds like the kind of man who will be clumsy with his choices due to inexperience. 

“Well,” Jay says, and he swallows, not sure why the feeling of being seen like this by a stranger is so much more intense when they suggest they’re new here. “If you weren’t new, you’d know-- I don’t know your name.”

“You can call me Sid.”

“Fine. I guess you saw on my profile--”

“You don’t like to be called by your name during this, yeah. I can read.” 

The snotty remark makes Jay sit up a little straighter, his dick getting harder as he listens to Sid circling around him. 

“You’re not new here,” Sid says. “Are you?”

“Um, no.” 

“Yeah, I didn’t think so. Put your arms behind the chair, calves against the front legs. I’m gonna tie you up now.”

Jay nods once and exhales. He licks his lips and obeys Sid’s instructions, his cock throbbing more urgently as he listens to Sid accessing one of the wall panels and retrieving supplies. 

“That’s cute,” Sid says when he approaches, leveling these words at Jay like an insult. “You get hard just for this part.” 

“I--” Jay isn’t sure how to respond. People don’t usually talk this much, or this casually. The talkers usually have a script. 

“Tell me if it’s too tight,” Sid says, kneeling behind Jay to tie his wrists together. The back of the chair is just wide enough to make this slightly uncomfortable, but Jay likes that. This isn’t about comfort. 

When Jay’s hands are bound, Sid moves forward to tie Jay’s legs to the front legs of the chair, one at a time. Jay feels hot breath on his knee and tries not to flex toward that warmth. Sid has big hands, and they’re warm, too. 

“There,” Sid says, standing when Jay’s legs are bound and spread open for him. Jay is breathing a little harder already, and he presses his lips together to try to get it under control when Sid puts a thumb under his chin and tilts his head back. “You like that?” Sid asks, muttering the question under his breath like he already knows the answer as he rubs at Jay’s beard with one curious finger. 

“Yeah,” Jay breathes out, just in case he wants a reply. This is basic shit, but something about Sid’s voice is getting him wound up. It’s cocky in a way that can’t be faked, deep and sort of mocking. 

“Good,” Sid says, and he steps away, taking the teasing heat of his body all the way across the room. “So,” he says. “Tell me about yourself.”

“What?” Jay says, shoulders jumping. 

“Tell me. About. Yourself.”

“Ah--” Jay actually thinks of using his fucking safe word, which is rare. He didn’t come here to talk, but maybe this is part of the game, and if Sid is trying to make him uncomfortable, that’s a road Jay might enjoy going down, even if getting there is awkward. “What do you want to know?” Jay asks. 

“Oh, I dunno. I suppose you won’t want to tell me what you do for a living.”

“Nope.” 

“Well, the feeling’s mutual there. How about-- What’s your favorite band?”

Jay almost laughs. What the fuck? He’s been asked and told some truly weird shit in the club before, but this almost nervous, adolescent appeal to his interests is the weirdest so far. 

“Uhh,” Jay says. “Talking Heads.”

“Huh. Yeah, I thought you were about my age. Hard to tell with that blindfold.” 

Jay wrinkles his nose, disliking this train of conversation, and also that poor logic.

“Anybody can have a favorite band from any period in time,” he says. “Has nothing to do with age.”

“Oh, bullshit. Age has _something_ to do with it. Anyway, I’m a Beatles guy myself.”

“Ah, so you’re old?”

Sid laughs, and it sounds genuine. Jay almost smiles, proud of himself for that joke. 

“I’m sure some people would consider me old,” he says. “You into older guys?”

“I’m into exactly what my profile says I’m into.”

“Oh yeah? It’s all there, everything? I think it was missing a few things.”

“Huh? Like what?”

“Like-- What’s your favorite movie?”

“Is this a joke?”

“No,” Sid says, so sharply that Jay startles a little. “Answer the question.” 

“Uhh, well. That’s not easy to answer, actually. Maybe _The Exorcist_.”

“You like horror movies?”

Jay sniffs. That’s an understatement. “Yes.”

“Okay. Huh. Yeah, that is a hard question, you’re right. Mine is probably, hmm. _The Rocketeer_.”

Jay laughs without meaning to, his shoulders twitching when he has the impulse to cover his mouth with his bound hands. 

“That’s funny to you?” Sid says, sounding so sincerely offended that Jay laughs again, pressing his lips together. 

“It’s just,” Jay says, and he decides to go with being a brat, because Sid sounds like the kind of guy who could give him a real good spanking for it. “Isn’t that, uh. A kids’ movie?”

“No. Are you kidding? It’s got Nazis in it, and murder. And a torture scene, even!”

“I don’t remember that part.”

“When they burn Cliff’s roommate with the stove?”

“Okay. Sure. I guess it’s been a while since I’ve seen that. I think I saw it in the theater when I was like eight years old, uh. And not since then.”

“Well. It’s a great fucking movie. Underrated, even.” 

“I remember thinking Jennifer Connelly was hot,” Jay says.

“When you were eight?”

“Well, yeah. You know, _pretty_ , or whatever eight year olds think.”

“Sure, yeah, me too. And Cliff, he was hot, too. I think I picked up on that when I was ten or whatever. Maybe that’s why I’m so into this movie. Could have been the first one where I had a crush on the guy and the girl.” 

The guy and the girl, Jay thinks, frowning a little at the immaturity of that phrasing. Who is this asshole, anyway? What is happening?

“You look displeased,” Sid says. He sounds amused.

“I’m just not sure where this is-- Going?”

Sid crosses the room toward Jay, slowly. His approach is so calm that it takes Jay completely off guard when Sid slaps him in the face, pretty hard. Jay makes a noise and slumps to the side, shoulders lifting. The sting on his cheek sinks quickly downward, throbbing at the seat of his balls and making his cock start to leak just a bit. He has that in his profile, that he likes to be slapped, just shy of hard enough to leave a bruise, but that still felt weirdly personal, like something Sid figured out on the spot or didn’t do because he thought Jay would like it. It felt like he did it because he wanted to, and Jay is really fucking into it, fidgeting against the chair and getting hot all over.

“Don’t worry about where this is going,” Sid says, softly enough to make Jay shiver. He shivers again when Sid touches the sore spot where he slapped Jay’s cheek, gentle now. “I’m taking it wherever I want to,” Sid says, still stroking him. The soft touch feels like a threat, even more so than his words. “And you’re along for the ride.”

Jay nods once and exhales, his hands flexing into fists behind the chair. 

When Sid moves away again, too far, Jay almost whines. He wants-- Something, more. He wants to feel those big hands manhandling him into position again, or, god, If Sid would slap his cock, Jay would moan for him like a whore right now, right at the start. It’s in his profile that he likes it. He licks his lips and waits, breathing harder than he was before Sid slapped him. 

“You’ve got a nice body,” Sid says, circling around him from a distance as he admires it. “You like working out?”

“Um. Sometimes I like it. I do it, regardless. To stay in shape.”

“Regardless,” Sid says, mocking, and he snorts. “What kind of body do you think I have?” 

“Big,” Jay says, feeling stupid for the inadequacy of the word. 

“Yeah, you’re not wrong there. How can you tell?”

“Your hands.”

“Hmm. Perceptive, considering I haven’t touched you much yet. But you’re right. See, we’re getting to know each other. Isn’t that the idea?”

Jay lifts his lip a little. Sid seems smart enough, despite his taste in movies, to realize that’s the opposite of the idea here. So he’s taunting Jay, making fun of him for liking the impersonality of this. Jay can work with that. He’s incredibly hard for it, despite the boring conversation about their interests. 

“So what do you do for fun?” Sid asks, still keeping his distance like he can tell it’s making Jay crazy. 

“I like to get fucked for fun,” Jay says, letting Sid hear that he’s starting to get annoyed. If he ends up using his safe word to get out of an awkward discussion about his personal interests, he’ll demand that management never allow this guy to partner with him again. 

“Anything else?” Sid asks, after considering this for a few seconds in silence. 

“Skateboarding, and I play the drums.”

Both are lies. Jay isn’t sure why he was even honest about his favorite band and movie. He can put on a fake personality just like the fake name, though he’d really rather not make the effort. 

Sid laughs. 

“Skateboarding?” he says. “Bullshit. Where are all your bruises?” 

Jay shrugs one shoulder, disliking the fact that he’s charmed by Sid sniffing out his lie. He doesn’t need to like these people, and otherwise he’s really starting to loathe this man. 

“And you’re not a drummer,” Sid adds.

“How the hell do you--”

“Speaking of hands, you seem to forget I got a pretty good look at yours when I was tying them up. Soft little baby hands. No way do you play the drums.” 

Jay curls his fists tighter and tries not to glower. He doesn’t want to let on that this is bothering him, which is absurd. Getting humiliated by strangers while tied up is one of his things. This just feels like something else, like he’s being interviewed by a pushy asshole on a blind date. 

Blind date, he thinks, snarling. Ha ha.

“Tell me one true thing about yourself,” Sid says, stalking closer at last. “And I’ll give you a reward.” 

“It’s so obviously your first time doing this,” Jay says, snapping this out before he can reconsider. “Do you want some advice?”

As Jay had hoped, this earns him another slap in the face. Sid strikes his opposite cheek this time, and Jay is drooling a little at the corner of his lips as the shock of pain runs down through him like warm water, pooling in his groin. 

“If I want your advice,” Sid says, bringing his face down close to Jay’s in a way that makes Jay gasp. “I’ll ask for it, you prissy little bitch.”

Sid’s breath smells like beer. Jay has kissing listed as a dislike on his profile. It’s not a complete dealbreaker, but most people don’t try it.

Instead of going for a kiss, Sid brings his thumb up to wipe at the wet corner of Jay’s mouth. Jay feels himself flushing for the contact, which is too intimate and also just condescending enough to get Jay’s cock throbbing again. Sid laughs under his breath, still hovering close to Jay’s face. 

“Fine, you don’t want to tell me what you do for fun?” Sid says. “We can talk about something else. How’s your relationship with your father?”

Jay’s right leg jerks, involuntary, and he realizes only afterward that he was trying to kick Sid. 

“Very funny,” Jay says, again considering his safe word. 

But the most fucked up of the many fucked up things about this is that he doesn’t actually want to stop, or even for Sid to back off. When Sid laughs, low and mean, Jay feels new heat rolling slow through his whole body. He doesn't even know what this _is_ , but he's almost dizzyingly aroused by it.

He’s been coming here for ten years. It’s been a while since anyone genuinely surprised him.

Also, beyond the beer breath, Sid smells really fucking good. 

“Wasn’t joking, actually,” Sid says, and suddenly his fingers are on Jay’s left nipple, pinching hard.

Jay yelps and twists in his bonds, pushing his shoulder back to spread his chest wider on instinct. 

“God,” he moans, instead of more, please.

“Answer my question,” Sid says. “Or I won’t touch you again till our hour’s up.” 

Jay wonders how much time has passed already. He licks his lips and tries to be calm about this. Sometimes people outside of the club try to corner him with personal questions, such as why he’s still single despite his success and mid-thirties makeover. He can handle it. 

“My father is a prick who lives in Montana,” Jay says, because he’s too weirdly gone for this to come up with a lie. “We don’t speak.”

“Ah.”

“Yeah, that explains everything, huh? You’re such an amateur.” 

“Ooh, blondie, now you’re getting mad!”

“No cutesy pet name shit!” Jay says, fidgeting in fruitless rage that he doesn’t want to be experiencing, even as it somehow also makes his dick leak out more precome. “It’s in my profile,” he adds, huffy. 

“Forgive me. And let me guess, daddy left home pretty early on?”

“Fuck you!” Jay says, not sure why he’s shouting this instead of the safe word, because this is way beyond the fucking pale and he wants to fight this guy as much as he wants to get fucked by him. Though he’s pretty sure he’d lose. Sid displaces a certain amount of air. Looming in front of Jay, he seems huge. 

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Sid says, flicking the swoop of hair that’s come loose over Jay’s forehead. 

“This kind of crap is a violation of your commitment to the club,” Jay says, hearing how pathetically turned on he sounds even so. “And you’re on a probation as a new member, so--”

“If you don’t like it, why don’t you safe word out, bitch? I saw your word on your precious little profile. Let’s hear it, and you’re free of me. You can even put a black mark on my profile, so you’ll never hear my voice again.” 

Jay shudders, breathing harshly through his nose, mouth clamped shut. He isn’t sure he’s okay with this level of-- He doesn’t even know what to call it. Humiliation play? Edgy first-timer bullshit? All he knows is that he somehow doesn’t want it to stop, which is a bitter pill to swallow while Sid wags this obvious fact in his face. 

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Sid says, his voice low and gravelly, breath warm against the tip of Jay’s nose. “Getting slapped in the face is for pussies. Anybody can take that. You want to really be ripped apart, I can tell. That’s why I picked your profile. Gonna fuck you up, painslut.”

Jay exhales so powerfully that it’s almost a groan. Sid chuckles and rewards him with another nipple pinch. The whimper it drags out of Jay is embarrassing, and god, his dick is so hard. 

“Look at that,” Sid says. “Your little cock sure likes the idea.” 

Jay just hangs his head and breathes. He can feel how wet he’s getting, precome soaking down his shaft in tickling beads that made him shiver, his thighs tensing when he instinctively tries to pull them together. 

“So you’re a sadist,” Jay says. “And you think you’re the first really hardcore one I’ve run into?”

“I don’t see any scars. Not sure you know what you’re talking about.” 

Jay huffs and squirms in his seat. He has no idea who this person is and no clue what to expect next. It’s making his skin sing from his heels to the top of his head, everything in him tipping toward brainless arousal that’s going to make him melt for this shithead, he can feel it. 

“How about your father?” Jay asks, completely unsure what kind of reaction this will elicit. “You want to talk about that?”

“Not sure it’s relevant, in my position, but he’s ‘aight.”

Jay snorts and tries to picture Sid’s face. He sounds handsome, which isn’t something Jay thinks he’s experienced before. Based on the way Sid grunts and how heavily he’s breathing, also that comment about Jay’s body, Jay would guess he’s not in great shape. Being big and tall means guys like him don’t have to bother. Jay has to carefully log his calories or an extra twenty pounds will make him look like a hobbit in no time. When Sid stands over him he seems especially tall, but maybe it’s just Jay’s skewed perspective. 

“Gonna untie your legs now,” Sid says. “Chair’s too good for you, really. I want you on the floor.”

Jay doesn’t protest, just takes a deep breath and lets it out while Sid works on his right leg, then frees his left. He’s unsteady on his feet when Sid helps him to lift his ass out of the chair, easing his bound hands over the back. Sid pushes him onto his knees. 

“Cheek on the floor,” Sid says, circling him at a distance again. “Ass up.” 

Without the use of his arms, Jay can’t really get into that position without face planting, and he grunts when landing face first on the cold floor hurts the sore spot on his cheek where Sid slapped him. The pain makes him arch into position with extra enthusiasm, and he spreads his knees apart, curving his back so Sid will have a good view of his ass. The floor in room 7 is marble, black with thin white veins. Jay huffs against it, imagining his breath fogging the shiny surface while Sid watches, silent. 

“Isn’t it worse, like this?” Sid asks, walking over to Jay. “Now that I know even a little bit about you?”

He puts his foot on Jay’s upturned cheek, digging the toe of his shoe into the sore spot until Jay whines for him, soft. It is worse, he’s right, and better. Jay feels on fire from livid shame that spreads down over his back and makes him need Sid’s cock up his ass like, yesterday.

“I wonder if I can guess what you do for a living,” Sid says, grinding his boot down to get another whine out of Jay, high-pitched this time. “Obviously you don’t work with your hands. Can you tell that I do?”

“Muh, most people who can afford this place don’t.”

“Oh, jesus.” Sid laughs hard. “Now who’s an amateur? You want to trade insults with me while I’m grinding you into the floor? While your dick’s dribbling out that cute little stream of drool for me? I can see it, you know. Got a good view from here.” 

Jay fidgets and Sid increases the pressure. It hurts. Jay is leaking a goddamn puddle onto the floor, it’s true. 

“Don’t leave marks,” Jay says, eyes closed tight behind the blindfold. “Not, not on my face--”

“Shut up, I know what the fuck I’m doing. I’m a small business owner, by the way. And I run the place myself. I bet you’re in finance or consulting, or something where you just count other people’s money and don’t--”

“Wrong,” Jay says, sharply. “And I’m not fucking telling you what I do.” 

“I don’t need to know precisely. You’re a desk jockey, I can tell by your hands.”

Jay says nothing. Sid isn’t wrong that a large part of the work Jay does takes place at a desk. But he’s a creative professional and he _does_ work with his goddamn hands during the other portion of his job, which is physically exhausting. He’s also really fucking good at both parts, and almost wants to tell this asshole he’s a small business owner, too, self-made. Award-winning, for that matter.

“It’s funny that you’ve got all this pride,” Sid says, taking his boot off Jay’s face. Jay imagines the dirty smear the bottom of his shoe might have left there and shivers. “But then you’re just shaking all over with how much you want to be put in your place, too.” 

“Yeah, I contain fucking multitudes. Can we get on with this, or am I just going to listen to you run your big mouth all night?”

Jay rarely takes this tack with competent dom personalities like Sid’s. Usually he sinks into a prescribed subby role and lets them think he’s afraid of them, or whatever they get off on. He’s not sure what’s going on here, but it’s Sid’s fault, for starting out with those goddamn questions about Jay’s life. And Jay isn’t complaining, really. If this guy ever gets around to fucking him in the ass, it’s going to be so good. He can feel it. 

Sid is on the other side of the room now, messing with one of the wall panels. Jay tries to get his choppy breathing under control. The floor feels hard against his knees, and his back is starting to ache a little. He’s not as young as he was when he started coming here, and keeping in shape only goes so far. But he likes the discomfort, especially now. It makes him feel like he really earned the indulgence of coming here, both in the long wait since the last time and while getting off on how unconsidered his needs are in these rooms. He’s here to be used. 

Thinking about Sid being the one who’s about to use him makes him need to chew his lip to hold in a moan. It’s because he can feel some real contempt emanating from Sid, despite the fact that they’re strangers. Maybe it’s because for Sid this is a special occasion he had to save for, while he surely noted on Jay’s profile that he’s had a monthly membership for almost a decade. This is information that clients can choose to have left off their profiles if desired, but Jay likes his partners to know what they’re getting into. He’s seen a lot, over the years. He’s not easy to please, and he’s a VIP around here. 

“You know what that sound is?” Sid asks, and Jay snaps back to the present, listening. 

Something is descending from the ceiling. This can mean several things: ropes, chains, swings, all of it custom built into the ceiling and accessible via the panels on the side wall. 

Then there’s Jay’s favorite thing that’s stored in the ceiling, as noted in his profile, and his mouth waters when he recognizes the sound of it lowering down toward him. 

“Hook,” Jay says, taken off guard by how small his voice has gotten, suddenly. 

“That’s right.” Sid takes hold of the thing and rubs it over Jay’s back, down along the length of his spine. He dips it just barely into the crack of Jay’s ass before he drags it back up again, and Jay shivers for the too-light touch of it. “I’ve never used one of these things on somebody. Saw it on your profile and thought it’d be fun to try. Does that scare you?”

“No. Just. Don’t do anything stupid.”

Jay fidgets, shifting his weight from one knee to the other. Most of his partners here don’t use the anal hook, maybe just because of the name. It’s not sharp or anything, just a narrow stainless steel hook with a bulb on the end that’s designed to stimulate the prostate. The fact that it hangs from the ceiling on a chain is mostly about setting off Jay’s imagination while he takes it with the blindfold on, and his shivering is getting intense already as Sid keeps dragging the hook’s cold metal bulb over Jay’s skin, teasing him. 

“Damn, you really do like this, huh?” Sid says. “It’s not even in you yet and you’re nearly creaming yourself.”

“We’ll see how long it actually takes you to make me come,” Jay says, his lips moving sluggishly against the floor even as he tries to sound smug. 

“We sure will, princess.”

“No cutesy names!” Jay says, lifting his cheek. 

Sid snorts and puts his foot on the back of Jay’s head, lowering it to the floor again. 

“Princess is an insult,” he says. “You really think I was being sweet with you when I called you that?”

“I don’t like gendered insults, that’s also in my profile.” 

“Pretty sure you liked being called a little bitch, so maybe you need to review your preferences.” 

“Bitch is-- I don’t know, it hits different.”

“Oh my god, shut _up_.”

Sid smacks Jay’s upturned ass so hard that he rocks forward against the blow, groaning. 

“Do you give everybody this much lip when you’re desperate to get fucked?” Sid asks, striking Jay’s burning ass cheek again, then again, fast and hard. 

“If you really wanted to shut me up,” Jay says, panting in the aftermath, “You would have done something about it by now.”

There are like twenty different kinds of gags over in one of the wall panels, for one. Or Sid could have just ordered him to be silent. All that stuff is a-okay according to Jay’s profile. He loves being gagged, with the right kind of person. It’s especially good with women, maybe because he still has a sliver of anxiety about talking to girls leftover from adolescence. 

“Can’t be having you plugged up here,” Sid says, and he tugs at the corner of Jay’s wet lips, pushing two fingers into his mouth. “Then I’d miss out on all the begging and moaning you’re gonna do for me, real soon.”

Jay grunts around Sid’s fingers and sucks eagerly as Sid pumps them in and out of his mouth. Sid’s skin is salty, though not so much that he tastes dirty, and his fingers are fat, fucking satisfying. Jay chases them when they pull back and swirls his tongue around them with gratitude every time they push in. 

“Shit,” Sid says, sounding impressed. “Maybe I’ll let you get your slutty mouth on my cock tonight. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” 

He pets Jay’s hair after asking, still fucking into his mouth with two fingers. The hair petting is so gentle that it’s doubly insulting, as if Sid is touching Jay with pity for what’s about to be done to his defenseless holes. Jay sighs for it, starting to melt a little. He fucking loves having someone use his mouth, and based on the length and width of his fingers he has a feeling Sid has a big, thick cock, and god yes he wants to suck it. 

“All right,” Sid says, yanking his fingers out when he’s perhaps sensed that Jay is starting to drift into brainless territory, despite the relative lack of stimulation. “Let’s get this into you, huh?”

For a moment Jay thinks Sid means his cock, and he moans in approval, then remembers the hook. That’s okay, too, though less ideal. It’s a good prostate stimulator but it’s narrow and cold, and Jay would ask for the opposite of that up his ass right now, if he were able to choose. 

Sid probably knows this, though maybe it’s insane to assume as much. He’s seen Jay’s profile, but that’s usually not enough to read a partner’s mind as things progress.

“Got something else for you, too,” Sid says, and Jay hears what sounds like a small, delicate chain being lifted before he feels the savage pinch of a clamp on his nipple. 

He manages to hold in his shout, but it comes out in a kind of half-suppressed groan when Sid clamps the other nipple and lets the weight of the chain he selected tug both downward, hanging heavy between the two clamps.

“There,” Sid says, petting Jay’s sweaty back. “That takes care of your tits. Now let’s get you strung up on this thing.” 

Jay feels like he might sob, though the painful pinch and weight on his nipples is good, too, and not unfamiliar. He feels weirdly abandoned, or something. He wants Sid’s hands there instead, or his mouth, god. He moans in relief when Sid rubs lube onto his hole. His fingers feel especially huge there, pressing in shallow circles and getting Jay sloppy. 

“Does wanting a hook up your ass make you some kind of freak?” Sid asks. He sounds like he’s sincerely interested in Jay’s opinion. 

“That word lost its impact on me a long time ago,” Jay says. 

“What--”

“Freak.”

“Oh?” Sid rubs lube into Jay’s crack and seems to understand to leave that alone, at least in part. “What would your colleagues say if they saw you now, I wonder.” 

Jay doesn’t have colleagues, as such. He has a part time employee who is married with kids but was a wild partier who lived all over Europe in his twenties, and he’d probably shrug it off if he knew Jay was a regular here. He certainly wouldn’t bat an eye at Jay wanting stuff up his ass. His name is Jack, and he only ever gives Jay a hard time about being ‘lonely,’ just because he would be, if he had Jay’s life. He doesn’t get it. Nobody Jay knows gets it, and sometimes he wonders if the other people who come here regularly might, but he can’t be friends with them, because that would ruin the comforting sterility of their interactions here.

Jay doesn’t want to be thinking about his employee’s opinion on his personal life while Sid rubs the bulb of the hook over his hole, working it in a bit at a time and making Jay tense with the need to have it deeper. He’s annoyed that Sid keeps wanting to talk about the realities of Jay’s life, but he has to admit it’s having the effect Sid probably hoped for. Jay feels uniquely vulnerable, in this position, like he’s not just playing a game with a stranger but like he’s been captured and claimed by someone who’s outmatched him. 

He hates being outmatched in real life, but it feels good here, and when Sid finally starts to slide the hook inside, Jay moans for the feeling of being eased open by him, the chain between the clamps on his nipples jingling when he shivers from his shoulders down to his tailbone. 

“Fuck, that looks hot,” Sid says, muttering this to himself, maybe without meaning to. “Kinda creepy, even. It doesn’t, uh, hurt, right?”

Jay laughs dryly. 

“Pretty sure you put these things on my nipples so they’d hurt,” he says. “So, that’s-- Funny, ha. No, unh, just. Feels good, don’t stop.” 

Sid slides the hook in until the bulb is pressed where it’s intended, and Jay gasps for the feeling of finally having stimulation there, his thighs squeezing together. He can hear the chain that the hook is attached to clinking slightly as it sways from the ceiling overhead, and a flush of almost uncomfortable arousal spreads through him when Sid moves the hook in tiny increments, rubbing it on Jay’s prostate until Jay he can’t help pressing his hips back to show Sid how much he likes that. 

“Let’s just leave that there, then,” Sid says, and Jay hears him stand, the hook left in place and not giving Jay enough friction where he wants it. It’s more like a tease, and when Jay clenches up around it he can get a little spark of pleasure, but it feels-- Clinical, in a way he normally likes but doesn’t want right now. His nipples are throbbing from the pressure of the clamps, meanwhile, and he hears Sid’s clothes rustling, his zipper coming down.

Jay licks his lips, then regrets it, because if Sid saw that he might realize how badly Jay wants a big cock in his mouth right now, and Jay has a feeling Sid would get off on denying him that. 

“Look at your back shaking,” Sid says, and then he’s kneeling beside Jay with a grunt, brushing his fingertips over Jay’s bicep in a way that only makes him shake harder. “You’re all sweaty, too. Just keep still like that. This angle’s just right.” 

Angle? Jay doesn’t ask, just does as he was told, and tries to shake less visibly, bracing himself with what strength he has left. He’s starting to drift, held in place with the toy in his ass and the clamps pulling on his chest, his mind wandering into nowhere land. 

Sid shuffles forward, and when Jay feels heat on the back of his neck he thinks it’s Sid’s hand at first, but this is different, more blunt, and--

“Oh god,” Jay whispers when he realizes it’s Sid’s huge dick, hard and hot across the back of his neck, resting there like a restraint collar. 

“You like that?” Sid asks, sounding a little breathy and overcome himself. Jay can only imagine the sight he’s enjoying: Jay ass up with that hook stuck inside him, face down with Sid’s heavy cock pinning him in place. The skin to skin contact burns like a claim, and Jay clenches his jaw, wishing he could touch himself. He flexes his bound hands into fists against the small of his back, his sense of disorientation starting to spiral and make his muscles liquify. His shoulders ache, his nipples are on fire, and the narrow width of the hook in his ass is almost worse than having nothing there at all. He wants to be so fucking wide open right now, wants to feel the heat of the massive cock that’s resting regally on the back of his neck pushing inside him and filling him up, deep. 

“Yeah, you do like that,” Sid says, and he lifts his cock just enough to make Jay moan when it slaps back down against his neck again. “Speechless, huh? Fuckin’ finally.”

No one has ever done this to Jay before. It’s not something that had even occurred to him as a thing that could be done, just having a huge cock resting on the back of his neck while the weight of the nipple clamps keeps his chest pulled down and the hook holds his ass up where Sid wants it. All of it, it’s-- Overwhelming, degrading, perfect. 

Sid pets Jay’s sides in slow, leisurely drags of his palm that almost tickle. Jay is making some kind of noises, little whimpers that he doesn’t even have the presence of mind to be embarrassed about. His ass is fluttering around the hook, hips stuttering in only small twitches so that Sid won’t be displeased with him and take his cock away. Jay would do just about anything to have it in his mouth or ass right now, but letting it rest against the back of his neck like it belongs there is making him throb all over with the pleasure of knowing it’s so close but not where he wants it, because he wasn’t good enough, doesn’t deserve it yet. 

He feels fucking _mind-merged_ with the person who’s doing this to him, this stranger, somebody whose real name surely isn’t Sid. It’s never happened before, here or anywhere. Jay wants to stay like this forever. 

“So sweet like this,” Sid says, the endearment breaking through Jay’s pain-pleasure haze a bit. Sid is touching his hair, then pinching the back of his ear, making him remember he even has ears, making him whine. “You lost your voice now, huh? Didn’t have to gag you, didn’t even have to stick my cock in there. That’s good, you just enjoy yourself. Feels good to know your place, huh? Right there on the floor, my personal dick rest.” 

Jay would have laughed if he wasn’t such a needy mess, but as it is he shivers and even nods in a tiny tilt of his head against the floor. Yes, this is where he belongs. It hasn’t felt this good in so long, to lose himself-- It doesn’t even feel like a loss, like letting go, like it usually does. This is more like waking up in the place where he’s always almost known he needs to be. 

“Gonna fuck you now,” Sid says after an interminable time like this, and Jay moans when he feels the hook sliding out of him slowly. He’d almost forgotten it was there, as if it became part of his body, warmed by his insides and nudging against his prostate in teasing, not-enough pressure that doesn’t matter anymore, even though the loss of the hook makes him feel painfully empty and unfulfilled, his cock screaming for attention between his legs and his arms going numb behind his back. Nothing matters except that Sid is going to fuck him now.

The nipple clamps come off, too. Jay whines, not sure if he’s thanking Sid for the relief or complaining that the throb of his overstimulated nipples hurts worse without the continued pressure. He’s not even sure it does hurt, or where the line between pain and pleasure is anymore. He just wants Sid to fuck him so hard, use him up, make him come untouched, anything so long as he’s filled up right after waiting so long.

“Here we go,” Sid says, kneeling behind him once the hook has been retracted up into the ceiling. Sid sets something on the floor, lube probably, then something else. He palms Jay’s ass gently, but Jay still startles at the touch, a live wire of anticipation, then pushes into it. “How are these feeling?” Sid asks, leaning over Jay’s back to touch his bicep. “It’s been a while, you want me to untie you?”

Jay hiccups and shakes his head, but he’s not saying no. He’d love to be untied. He just can’t answer questions like that right now. He can’t choose. 

“Hmm, well. You’re gonna stay bowed down for me anyway, right? And keep your hands off this?”

Sid reaches down between Jay’s legs, ghosting the pad of his thumb over Jay’s pulled tight balls before stroking his dick with his knuckles. It’s much too soft to get Jay off, especially with all of his remaining mental energy focused on the aching emptiness in his ass, but he shouts from the intensity of it anyway, having waited so long for anything there. 

“Goddamn,” Sid mutters. He sounds impressed, or worried. Jay can’t tell. He isn’t quite floating weightless yet, but will be once Sid puts his dick inside. Jay would be begging if he could even form words at this point. He can still feel the ghosting imprint of Sid’s cock across the back of his neck, as if he left a brand there. 

When Sid unties his hands, Jay’s arms flop bonelessly to the floor around him. He moans with gratitude when Sid rubs his shoulders, then the muscles in his biceps. Sid’s hands aren’t just big but strong, and the powerful kneading of Jay’s muscles feels so good. Sid helps him stretch his arms up over his head, both still limp against the floor. This feels good, too, being moved into whatever position Sid wants him in.

Sid shifts back behind him, and at first the blunt pressure against Jay’s hole makes him groan with relief. Then he realizes something’s off. It’s not as hot as it should be, and the texture is wrong. 

“Wha,” Jay says, his voice just a weak, watery thing.

“I know what you want,” Sid says, caressing Jay’s ass as he wiggles the tip of what feels like a fat silicone dildo against him, not pushing in yet. “But we’re not there yet, you and me. You were real rude, earlier, before I showed you your place. Not even sure you deserve to put your mouth on my dick, frankly. But I can see you need to be fucked hard, painslut. Can see you hurting for it, so. Gonna do you this favor, and maybe next time you’ll show me more respect.”

Jay sobs when Sid pushes the lubed up dildo inside. It’s wide and it burns going in, but it’s not enough, and the wrenching disappointment of it fills Jay with a corresponding kind of perverse relief, because it feels good to cry and know that Sid is right. Jay should have been good. It’s Jay’s fault he’s getting punished with a toy instead of rewarded with Sid’s cock, Jay’s fault that he won’t get to take a big load of Sid’s come deep inside.

He’ll be so good next time, he thinks, wibbling and rolling his hips back as Sid works the dildo in deeper, fucking him in increasingly smooth drags, showing Jay that the toy he picked out is not just wide but long, too. When it’s all the way inside, Jay can feel a pair of big silicone balls settled against his wide open ass, and it adds insult to injury that Sid chose one like this, with extra fake anatomy to taunt Jay with while he denies him the real thing. 

“Didn’t see this on your profile,” Sid says, soothing a gentle hand over Jay’s back while he cries pathetically into his arms. He’s folded them over his face, hiding from the force of his shame as he starts to move back onto the dildo as much as Sid will let him, his other hand clamped around Jay’s hips to keep him mostly steady. “But I knew it,” Sid says, sighing as if he’s contented, like he could do this all night. “Knew you’d be a crier. Not for everyone, maybe, but for me. That’s good, sweetheart. Let it out.”

Jay sobs harder for the endearment. He’s not going to say no to nice names, or to anything. Sid can do whatever he wants. 

Sid fucks him with the dildo at a gradually quickening pace, until the lube is making a loud squelching sound and Jay is rocking back into every thrust, as deeply as Sid will let him. Jay can feel the puddle of drool under his face, smeared across the floor. It’s humiliating and filthy and he’s going to come just from being fucked like this, with this lesser thing that’s all he deserves. He’s so bad, he knows he is. He can’t help it. He needs someone like Sid to show him how to be good. 

There’s no semblance of a thought process to cling to as Jay gets closer to coming, making a steady keening animal noise as Sid pounds that thing into his prostate, and the huge hand that grips Jay’s cock when he’s so close that he’s shaking all over is so alien and hot and greedy that Jay comes with a sobbing shout for the first pump of his dick in those massive, encircling fingers. It’s the kind of release that makes him explode into pure energy and heat, nothing wasted, perfectly within himself and also spilling out everywhere, evaporating into the consuming relief of it. 

He doesn’t pass out, but he definitely goes somewhere inside himself, and when he can next make sense of what’s happening, that big hand is on him again, now touching his face, and there’s whispering. He curls toward the heat of Sid’s body, reaching for him weakly. 

“Just the tip,” Sid is saying, and Jay comes back to himself enough to realize that Sid sounds unhinged, too, like he’s also traveling somewhere within this thing that’s happening to them. “You want it?” Sid asks, nudging something against Jay’s parted lips.

Jay moans when he realizes what it is: Sid’s cock, hot and sticky with precome. Jay laps at it eagerly and whines when Sid grabs a handful of his hair to keep him from swallowing it down. It tastes so good, and it’s so thick, the head pressing in past Jay’s lips and pushing his mouth open wide. 

“Fuck,” Sid whispers. “Careful, now, ah-- You only get the tip, fuh-- Fuck, you-- God, you want it.” 

Jay moans in confirmation and tries to fight his way forward on Sid’s cock, wanting to choke on it. He can’t even see it, but he knows it’s the most perfect dick he’s ever had the privilege of drooling onto, maybe the best dick in the world. He feels lit up and giddy, lucky, spoiled, and still he wants more. 

“That’s enough for now,” Sid says, and he huffs a tired-sounding laugh when Jay whimpers at the loss as Sid’s cock pulls away from him. “Lie down,” Sid says. “Forehead on the floor.” 

Jay does as Sid asked without hesitation. He wonders if Sid will put his cock inside now. Jay is all fucked out and sore from the dildo, but he doesn’t care. He could be more sore. He could like it.

He’s a puddle on the floor, melted, and Sid adds to the mess of him by coming across the back of his neck. Jay sucks in a shocked, shaky breath, because it feels like another brand, a lasting one, like he’s being marked, and he likes it. Sid isn’t spraying him heedlessly but carefully painting his skin with come, not letting a drop spill until it’s dripping over the sides of Jay’s neck, down toward his throat. Sid is quiet as he unloads, except for heavy breathing and a soft curse when he’s done. 

Jay is drifting again, not even hard but tense with some new kind of coiled-tight need as he listens to Sid stand and walk across the room. The chill in the air seems to hit Jay all at once, like a blanket of cold thrown over his back, and he tries to blink behind the blindfold. His eyes feel puffy, and the inside of the blindfold is damp. He shifts against the floor and whines when he feels himself settling into a puddle of what he presumes is his own come. Sid’s is cold across the back of his neck now, and Jay is starting to piece his sense of self back together in a way that he wants to resist, because he feels bad, weird, and abandoned. 

He hears water running across the room and remembers where they are: room 7, which has a fully stocked wet bar built into one of the seamless wall panels like all the other rooms. The water shuts off, and Jay's shoulders flinch when he hears Sid’s footsteps. He’s not sure what he’s supposed to do. He needs Sid to tell him, and the fact that Sid isn’t talking is making Jay start to panic, his breath coming faster against the floor. 

“Here you go,” Sid says, and his closeness helps. So does the big hand he rests on Jay’s back while he uses a damp cloth to clean the come off of Jay’s neck. “You’re okay,” Sid says, petting between Jay’s shoulder blades while he cleans him. “Now roll over-- No, not that way, come here.” 

Sid helps Jay sit up, and Jay gropes for him, catching what feels like an open shirt with buttons. There’s a t-shirt underneath it. Jay slumps against Sid’s chest while Sid cleans his front with the cloth. Sid is both bigger and softer than Jay expected, and Jay needs both right now, badly. He burrows into the warmth of Sid as much as he can, and only whines a little when Sid brings the cloth down to clean Jay’s cock, then his ass. 

“Let’s get you out of this mess,” Sid says. He puts his arms around Jay and lifts him off the floor, picking him up entirely. “You’re like a ragdoll,” Sid says, holding him close while he carries him across the room. 

Jay clings, taking two handfuls of Sid’s shirt. It’s a pulled-open button down with short sleeves, billowing a little around Jay’s legs, which are clamped tight around Sid’s waist. Sid grunts and shifts Jay so he’s holding him with just one arm. Jay hears a wall panel activate, then the sound of the bed-like couch that’s built into each of the rooms opening out of the wall until the base of it finally settles onto the floor. 

“There we go,” Sid says, sitting down on the couch and shifting Jay’s legs around so that Jay is in his lap. Jay relaxes into the feeling of being held and sighs against Sid’s throat, where he can feel some stubble against his lips. It’s comforting, and so is the way Sid is holding him: close, possessive, rubbing his big hands here and there to warm Jay’s bare skin. Sid’s jeans feel good under Jay’s raw ass. Everything feels good, actually. Jay doesn’t normally let people hold him, because he normally doesn’t need it. He’s usually quick to recover, snapping from one compartmentalized part of himself and back to the default. That’s not going to be the case this time, and he doesn’t even care, because Sid is here, taking care of him. 

“This couch that folds out of the wall is pretty cool,” Sid says after they’ve both been quiet for a while, Sid stroking Jay’s back and arms while Jay rests against him, letting his frazzled mind resettle. “It’s like something from Star Trek. This whole room, actually-- It’s like the holodeck, you know?”

“I guess,” Jay says. He shifts in Sid’s lap, can’t get enough of how huge Sid is and how good it feels to have Sid’s massive arms around him while his chest pushes Jay up and down with his breath. “I’ve, um. I’ve only seen a few of the Star Trek movies, the old ones.”

“Aw, really? You should watch the series. At least TNG.” 

“Mph,” Jay says, beginning to peel away from the sense that he should actually, literally do everything this man says. 

“What’s your favorite show?” Sid asks, giving Jay a little squeeze.

Jay sighs. Back to these questions? He feels too safe and well-fucked to really mind, though.

“Twin Peaks,” he says. 

“Interesting. Never did get around to watching that one.”

“It’s on Netflix now. If you want to check it out.”

“Yeah, maybe I will. It’s scary, right?”

“Kind of. It’s-- Atmospheric.”

“Ah, gotcha. You like that spooky stuff, huh?” He rubs Jay’s back when he doesn’t respond. Jay smiles against Sid’s throat, because he seems kind of nervous, like he’s trying to flirt. “I bet your favorite holiday is Halloween.”

Jay goes a little stiff, because it is, and suddenly he’s not sure how he feels about Sid being right about this. Maybe it was just a lucky guess, since Jay told him he likes horror movies and scary shows, also hooks. 

Before Jay can decide how to respond, the gentle chime tone that indicates they have five minutes remaining in their appointment sounds overhead. The next one will come three minutes later, and they’ll both have to pay an extra fee for this appointment if they’re not out of the room within two minutes after that one. 

Jay fidgets in Sid’s arms, trying to force himself to detach from his body heat and the perfect shape of him. 

“That means we have to--”

“I know what it means,” Sid says, a little sharply, like he’s insulted by Jay’s assumption that he’s clueless. “Five more minutes. That’s fine. Unless you want me to get lost now?”

Jay hesitates, not sure how to respond. It would be smart. Jay needs a moment to get his bearings, alone. 

“I’ll leave when the next one goes off,” Sid says, his hand slipping back down to the small of Jay’s back. “Okay?”

“Okay,” Jay says, curling up against him again.

“Hey,” Sid says, in a way that makes Jay go tense, because he’s afraid he knows what’s coming. “Um. Weird question, but. Are you busy, like. After this?”

“It’s against policy to--”

“Okay, I know, sorry! Just asking. Because you seem. Like. Maybe you need more than three more minutes of, uh. Aftercare.”

Jay wants to prove him wrong, so he sits up. He almost wants to take the blindfold off just so he can glare at this presumptuous asshole, but he never takes it off. That would ruin things. 

“Right,” Jay says, tightly. “You want to hang out after this so you can adequately supply aftercare. Not because you have no idea how this stuff works and you think-- You want to-- Whatever. Have round two for free.”

Sid is silent after this outburst. Jay feels increasingly strange, being held by him while the energy between them becomes icy. 

“Wow,” Sid says. “Okay. In that case. Forget it.”

“I’m sorry,” Jay says, without meaning to, surprising himself. “Just. Please. Respect the process. That’s so messy and not allowed and just-- A bad idea, trust me.”

“Messy and not allowed is what I’m into. That’s in my profile, more or less. If you want to check it out sometime.”

“It’s crazy that you picked mine, then,” Jay says, touching Sid’s chest and moving his fingers up to the collar of his t-shirt. “I’m, like, the opposite of that. Uh. At least on paper.”

“Exactly,” Sid says, and Jay can hear his smart ass grin. 

“Hmm,” Jay says. 

It’s annoying that Sid thinks he can prove him wrong about himself, or something. But Jay can’t deny that was the best appointment he’s had here in years. He feels like he went on a mini vacation from linear space and time, which is the whole reason he likes being dominated like that, when he can get into the right headspace with the right person. It’s a high he’s never been able to replicate with drugs or booze.

“You have nice skin,” Sid says, petting Jay’s arm. “What?” he says when Jay snorts at this remark. 

“What’s so nice about it?” Jay has perfectly average skin, so far as he can tell.

“It’s soft, for a man, but not too soft, and-- I dunno. Just, it’s nice. And so are your lips.”

“Ugh.” Jay reaches up to cover his mouth. “I hate my lips.”

“What! How could you?” Sid takes Jay’s wrist and draws his hand away, carefully. “They’re fucking-- Pink, and the bottom one’s all fat--”

“You can’t see the top one because of the mustache, but believe it me it’s not great.”

“Gimme a break. I can see plenty. You’re really cute. This is seriously my first time here, and I wasn’t expecting someone so. Umm. Adorable, I guess. Even your dick--”

“All right,” Jay says, because they need to be winding down, not sinking deeper into this weird connection. 

He isn’t quite ready to get up, though, and doesn’t see why he should before the two minute warning sounds, so he lets his hand skim over the shape of Sid. He touches Sid’s broad, chubby chest, and leaves his palm pressed over Sid’s heart for a few seconds, just to see how excited he is by this or not. His heartbeat is steady against Jay’s hand, powerful. Jay shivers a little and pushes his hand upward, feeling his way over Sid’s throat, his scratchy jaw, and up to his ears. They’re a little pointy, which makes Jay grin. 

He waits for Sid to tell him to stop, and when he doesn’t, Jay feels way over Sid’s lips and then his nose, trying to figure out what his face looks like from touch alone. He feels Sid’s eyelashes fluttering against his fingertips, and hears his breath coming quicker. He has thick eyebrows and short hair. 

“What do you think you’re doing?” Sid asks after this has gone on for a while. He catches Jay’s wrist and holds it. Jay’s right shoulder is resting over Sid’s heartbeat, which is a little faster now. “You want to take the blindfold off?” Sid asks, quietly, as if it’s against the rules of the club and not just Jay’s personal rules.

“No,” Jay says, though he does. 

“Oh,” Sid says. “Maybe this is what you’re after, then.”

Jay opens his mouth to ask what he’s talking about and is met with Sid’s lips against his before he can speak. He gasps but doesn’t pull away, even when Sid licks at him and pushes his tongue into Jay’s mouth, testing him, tasting. Jay sighs and presses his tongue out to meet Sid’s, feeling awkward but good, too, like he needed this kind of affirmation. Kissing has never really felt like a sweet sort of compliment before, but that’s how Sid does it, like he’s showing Jay how much he likes him, letting him feel how hungry and wet-mouthed he is for more. 

The two minute warning chime sounds overhead. That can’t be right, Jay thinks, still kissing Sid. No way have they already burned three minutes since the last one. 

“Okay,” Sid says, pulling back. He breathes against Jay’s wet lips, strokes his cheek. “I’ll go.”

“Yeah,” Jay says, feeling like he won’t get his vision back even after Sid is gone and he removes the blindfold, like he’s given something up and Sid is going to take it with him. 

“Just-- Tell me, uh.” Sid touches the side strap on the blindfold, brushing two fingertips over it. “What color are your eyes?”

“Green,” Jay says, urgently, as if they’re spies and this is a code that Sid will need to find him again.

Sid makes a little noise under his breath like: yep, that was the code word he’d hoped to hear.

“Listen, green eyes,” Sid says, pressing his mouth to Jay’s ear. “Next time? If you’re sweet enough for me? I’m gonna give you my cock. If you’re real good, I’ll let you use it like it’s one of those toys hidden in the walls. For the full hour, my big cock would be all yours. Think you’d like that?”

“Yes,” Jay says, moaning the word out. 

He only realizes that he’s got a death grip on the collar of Sid’s shirt when Sid starts to move away, shifting Jay onto the couch. Jay gasps when his bare ass hits the familiar canvas slipcover. He’d forgotten he was naked, sorta.

“I’d better get out of here before they dock me for dawdling,” Sid says, sliding away, and just like that, the heat of him is entirely gone and the chill of the room is crawling over Jay’s exposed skin again. “See you around, shorty.”

Sid crosses the room in a quick, long stride, and when he shuts the door behind him, Jay’s shoulder’s jump. 

Jay has to get out of here, too, within two minutes. His hands are shaking when he reaches for the blindfold, and he’s not sure why he’s afraid to take it off until he does and he sees the empty room. It’s so-- Blank. He’s so alone here. It’s never bothered him before. He’s usually relieved to reach the end of an appointment, ready to retreat from the echoes of intimacy that linger in the room after his partner has gone. 

He goes to the compartment with his robe and slippers, telling himself to get over it. His legs are like jelly, arms even worse, and he’s sluggish as he pulls the robe onto himself, exhausted. It was just a really good appointment. He’s had them here before. It’s why he keeps coming back, for that once in a year or so lightning strike. 

And Sid wants to see him again. He said so. 

Jay doesn’t feel his high dropping off until he’s in the locker room, and he hurries through his shower more quickly than he usually does. As with arrival, he has a full twenty minutes before someone else will be allowed in here. There are two locker rooms in the club, both unisex, and per Jay’s personal policy, his partner will always be assigned to the other locker room after their appointment ends, so there’s no risk of awkward encounters. It’s served him well in the past, and he’s glad for it now. He feels jumpy as he gets dressed, looking over his shoulders while he huddles by his locker. His lips are still buzzing from the force of Sid’s kisses, even after washing his face in the shower. 

He checks his reflection in the mirror over the sinks before heading out, scanning his cheeks for any signs of bruising. The skin on his face is splotchy, mostly from that sobbing that he regrets now, though he was barely himself while he did it. He can’t even remember what set him off, and flushes when he thinks it might have been Sid saying Jay didn’t deserve his dick after being rude to him. Ridiculous, but-- In the moment, it worked. He doubts it was really Sid’s first time here. Sid probably tells that to all the people he doms till they’re breaking down into cathartic tears. It’s part of the act, like the promise that they could earn his cock if they request to partner with him in the future. Maybe he’s a professional. Jay has suspected before that at least a few work here, for the club. 

Jay’s eyes are still blown, his pupils so fat that he looks high. He orders an Uber and keeps his head down as he moves through the lobby, though he’s never had an issue with sloppy scheduling meaning that he sees someone else upon exit, as long as he keeps his departure within his assigned twenty minute window. He nods goodnight to the security guard and makes his way outside, surprised by how cold it’s gotten since he entered. It’s late spring in Milwaukee. He shrugs on his coat and slips into the shadows near the club while he waits for his car. 

By the time he’s walking into his apartment he’s starting to feel the worst drop he’s experienced in years, and he sneers when he remembers Sid’s offer to stay with him and continue the aftercare. As if that’s ever appropriate from a stranger. What did Sid expect, an invitation back to Jay’s place? Jay will shake out of it, anyway. He just needs to sleep. 

He dresses down to his undershirt and boxers and opens his laptop in bed to check his work email before he attempts to nod off, already fearing it will take a while. He’s all restless and jittery, his hands shaking on the keys. Getting an email from Jack about not being able to make it to the Peterson wedding on Saturday because of some emergency with his mother-in-law only sets Jay more on edge, and he feels his jaw clenching as he thinks about what a big pain in the ass it’s going to be to find another competent camera operator for hire by then. He has a mouth guard that he’s supposed to wear to bed to prevent his expensive dental work from getting fucked up when he grinds his teeth at night, which he resents, because it’s like these goddamn teeth will never be fixed entirely, no matter how much he spends or how much discipline he exhibits. 

He’s getting up to fetch the mouth guard when a new email comes in. It’s from his personal concierge at the club, the standard courtesy email and survey she sends out for feedback after all of his appointments. 

Jay pulls his knees up against his chest and chews his lip. He usually answers these surveys right away, before the details of the experience start to fade. Sometimes they’re already hard to dredge up, if he went really far under. 

The email is the standard template he knows well, none of this having changed much in ten years:

_Dear Dex,_

_Our warmest thanks for visiting Elite Experiences this evening. Your membership is a valuable part of our club’s excellent reputation, and your loyalty is appreciated. If you would be so kind, please take the survey linked below to provide important data that will help you and our other members navigate the matching process in the future. As always, please also feel free to reach out to me by email or phone with any comments, requests, or needs you have following your appointment._

_Your next appointment (auto scheduled) is set for June 7. Please let us know if you need to reschedule or if you have any requests for matching, room selection, materials, special occasions, or anything else you should require of us._

_With kind regards,  
Greta _

The survey she’s linked is also very familiar to Jay, and he normally enjoys filling it out. It’s a nice come down activity once he’s safely home in his own bed: evaluating his partner with constructive criticisms and any praise they might have earned, to assist the club with ranking and sorting members accordingly. It’s part of how their matching process works, and Jay can admit that he also just likes judging people. His secret enjoyment of it is one reason he’s been able to tolerate wedding after wedding as a videographer for fifteen years running. He always goes online to review the venue, caterer, bartending service, musicians, DJs, and anything else he sees guests experiencing, because as a member of the industry he takes this shit seriously, even if he also thinks weddings are a ridiculous waste of money and that marriage itself is an absurd and outdated institution. He judges the brides, grooms, family members and guests, too, though only privately and for his own entertainment. 

He opens up the survey, feeling nervous about rating his experience with Sid, and then stupid for his nervousness. 

_1\. On a scale of 1 to 10, please rate your satisfaction with the following in regards to your experience with your partner on your appointment dated May 23 (or mark ‘Not Applicable’ as appropriate):  
-Respect for your profile’s parameters  
-Respect for club policy  
-Responsiveness to your needs  
-Stamina  
-Creativity  
-Communication  
-Cleanliness  
-Skill level  
-Overall satisfaction level_

Jay gives Sid a ten on all of these, not wanting to linger on this part or think about the fact that he’s never scored anybody so high before. The profile and club policy answers aren’t even true, and he’s not sure the cleanliness one is either, considering Sid’s beer breath, but he doesn’t consider the general 1 to 10 ranking all that useful. There are more specific questions ahead, and he’s mostly interested in moving on to the next one, which asks him to select all applicable terms on a page of over 100 ticky boxes that may or may not apply to Sid based on Jay’s experience with him, and a comment box at the bottom to add more specific feedback.

Jay chews his lip and studies the available terms that best characterize his experience. He picks Dominant right away, and Dirty Talk. Creative applies, too, and Large Cock, though Jay was mostly just teased with it. He’s got no doubt that this attribute is accurate, however, and he touches the flushed skin across the back of his neck, remembering how Sid’s cock felt like it belonged there. He feels himself starting to sweat under his t-shirt and imagines Sid reviewing this survey, though he won’t have access to Jay’s answers. They’re for club management’s eyes only. Jay appreciates this. Having to read his own feedback would be a real ego blow, he sometimes fears. 

His cursor hovers over Tender and then over Gentle, and he’s irritated by the fact that these terms are separate, because what’s the fucking difference? And was Sid either thing? He’s not even sure. He certainly wasn’t primarily those things, but one ticky box isn’t exclusive of another. 

He leaves those unchecked and selects Adventurous, Cocky/Arrogant, Sadistic (Mild), Face Slapping, Spanking (Short Duration/Teasing), Degradation (Verbal - Moderate), Anal Penetration (Dildo or Strap-on - Large), Anal Penetration (Other), Nipple Torture (Mild - Toy-Based), Restraints, and finally, grudgingly: Aftercare (Cuddling) and Aftercare (Kissing). 

He dithers over a few other choices before moving on to the comment box, where he adds his own specific terms:

Big Hands, Pushy, Likes to Talk, Face Stepping (mild)

His fingers hover over the keys for what feels like a long time as he struggles to come up with other key words or even a sentence or two to describe the experience. He can’t put it into words without confessing that he was particularly affected on a personal level by this encounter, for reasons unknown, and he doesn’t even like privately acknowledging that he was. He wants to type ‘Mindfuck,’ but he feels like that’s being too dramatic, and he already isn’t sure how Sid got to him as much as he did. 

He moves on to the next question, which is how willing on a scale of 1 to 10 he would be to partner with Sid again, above another comment box for optional additional feedback. Thinking of how Sid promised to let him have his cock if he behaved himself next time, he snarls at the screen. Fuck that guy, honestly. He probably runs the same routine on every partner he has, even if he’s new to this club in particular, then congratulates himself afterward for showing them he knew what they wanted better than they did. 

Is that he what he did? Or tried to do? Jay isn’t even sure. He feels shaken up in a way that he doesn’t like, and knows he’s going to let this shit get to him at least until his next appointment, turning it over in his mind and wondering what certain things meant or why they felt the way they did, and what it would be like to be with Sid again, if he would really let Jay do whatever he wanted with that big dick.

This kind of tedious preoccupation with his sex life is the opposite of what he wants and needs from the club, so he rates his willingness to partner with Sid again as a ‘1’ and puts notes in the comment field to explain.

_While this encounter was satisfying as a one-off, I’m not personally interested in another appointment with this partner. I would recommend him to anyone who enjoys the elements I checked off on the previous page, and have no particular complaint about his approach, but please make a note in my file that I would not like to be scheduled with him again._

His chest tightens against the extreme dishonesty of this, but the sticky-sweet desire to have more or know more about this person is the kind of dangerous glop that he needs to avoid, or his teeth will rot and his waistband will expand-- metaphorically, also maybe literally. He’s been that person before, and he very carefully guards against old, bad habits now. 

He imagines Sid reading this comment about their appointment and being disappointed or even legitimately sad that Jay doesn’t want to partner with him again. But that’s fucking ridiculous, both because he’ll never see it and because it’s probably just the sort of thing that asshole would love to know, that Jay arrogantly assumes he has the power to hurt Sid’s feelings after one good fuck. 

Jay remembers Sid calling him _green eyes_ and how hearing it made him feel like he’d already agreed to give some part of himself to Sid, a stranger. He’d been so deep in lingering subspace that he’d actually liked the feeling, at the time. It was a big violation, really, for Sid to talk about their hypothetical future together at the club while Jay was like that, and an even bigger one to offer to be with him when they left, for ‘aftercare.’ The guy could be dangerous. He’s bad for Jay, regardless.

He submits the survey with the rating of ‘1’ on willingness to partner again and the comment about taking Sid off his rotation entirely. It’s for the best, and he stares at the ‘thank you for submitting’ screen for a long time, waiting to feel better for making the right choice. Finally he can’t stop looking at those words and hearing Sid saying them to him with mean laughter in his eyes, which probably are nothing like the big, sweet eyes Jay pictured when Sid held him in his lap and let him touch his face. He shuts the laptop hard and sinks down into his bed, knowing he won't be able to fall asleep for a while.

*


	2. Chapter 2

The next few days are stressful, and Jay’s sleep remains poor. Dealing with long, restless nights in bed only reinforces his belief that he made the right decision in cutting Sid out of his partner pool at the club. He can’t carry this stuff with him after he leaves the place; it’s too heavy, and takes up too much space in his brain. He has other things to worry about, real things, like finding a replacement camera operator for the Peterson wedding and maybe talking to Jack about whether he even wants to continue taking weekend jobs for Jay’s company, since his schedule has only gotten patchier and harder to work around as his kids have gotten older. Jay might have to find a new regular partner for his shoots, and just the idea is exhausting. Trusting people is hard for him. He’s worked with Jack since they met in film school, and trying to develop that kind of professional relationship with a new person seems impossible at this stage of his life, but he can’t keep accommodating Jack’s sudden schedule shifts. Weddings don’t work that way. 

He manages the shoot by calling in a favor from another old friend from film school, his ex-girlfriend Tori. She’s the only person Jay ever really tried to date for more than a few weeks of uncertain back and forth that fizzled and left him feeling rejected. She’s also the person who introduced him to being dominated in bed, which is definitely why their relationship lasted as long as it did, and she’s the one who eventually told him about the club. She’s not a member anymore, as she’s married and her husband isn’t into the whole sharing thing. He’s also not into Jay, because he thinks that Tori is still hung up on him, which Jay doesn’t think is true, though he’s pretty shameless about asking her to help him out with stuff like this when he thinks she’ll say yes. 

“How’ve you been?” she asks when they’re packing up Jay’s equipment at the end of the reception, the bride and groom having departed and the guests thinning out as the band packs up, too. 

“Same as ever,” Jay says, though a part of him almost wants to discuss his experience with Sid at the club and how fixated he’s remained on it throughout the week. Who else could he ever tell? But it’s none of her business either, and he doesn’t want her advice. 

“Working on any side projects these days?” she asks. 

“Like I have time for that,” Jay says. It’s almost summer, peak wedding season, and he’s got at least one shoot booked every weekend till August. 

She’s asking because they used to make movies together. Their relationship ended in a bitter fight when she accused him of being in love with the actress who was playing the lead role in a project they’d written together, which was bullshit. He gets attached to people in certain ways, some more control-based than others, but he’s never been in love with anyone, really, and that’s what the fight was actually about: he wasn’t in love with Tori, and they both knew it by then.

“It’s so funny to me that you ended up doing this,” she says. 

“What?”

“Weddings, exclusively.”

Jay doesn’t ask why it’s funny, because he knows what she’ll say, that it’s ironic that he films other people’s supposed happy endings for a living but has given up on relationships for himself. He hears it from everyone and wants to get into it probably least of all with her. 

“How’s Dave?” he asks. 

“He’s really into archery, lately.”

“Uh. Okay?”

“Don’t laugh,” she says, whipping a camera strap at him in a way that makes him blush and think of old times. “You used to make puppets for fun.”

“So?” Jay says, wincing at the memory. All that stuff is packed away in a closet now. 

“So you can’t judge other people’s dorky hobbies, clearly. Do you even do puppetcraft anymore?”

“What did I just tell you about my free time? I don’t have any.” 

“Hmm,” she says, like she doubts it, as if someone who’s single can’t possibly be as busy as she is, even with her husband off playing with bows and arrows. “That’s sad,” she says. 

“Oh, fuck off,” Jay mutters, tired of having his life characterized as sad just because it’s exactly how he wants it to be, nobody else’s input required. 

“I’m not trying to be mean,” she says. “I just loved your puppets.” 

Jay rolls his eyes at the thought of making a puppet at this stage in his life, or a movie. He does miss making things that aren’t wedding videos, but he’s the best in the midwest, and he’s fucking sought after. Maintaining his professional reputation means a lot to him and takes almost all his energy. Tori wouldn’t understand. She works in HR at the same state school where they met in the film program, and she gets three weeks off for winter break. Jay hasn’t taken a week off in years.

Part of what he likes about his work is the lifestyle it affords him. He lives in a three bedroom apartment on the twelfth floor in a nice building in downtown Milwaukee. When he bought the place his mother got all starry-eyed, as if the two spare bedrooms might be intended for the children he’s been telling her he’ll never have since he was about six years old, around the time he started to feel like he’d inherited his little sister as his dad left for good and his mom mentally checked out in the aftermath. Even his mom will admit now that Jay basically raised his sister by himself until she hit middle school. Once around that block was enough, and he doesn’t want kids. One of the extra bedrooms is his office and editing suite, and the other has a pull out futon for when his sister stays with him, otherwise doubling as his home gym and cinema screening room, where he watches movies on a massive wall-mounted flatscreen and has installed a top of the line sound system.

He spends a lot of time in the apartment, since it's his place of business as well as his residence, so it’s important to surround himself with nice things. His furnishings are mostly tasteful, nothing flashy but all of it well-made and modern, and since he hardly ever has anyone over he also has some year-round Halloween-adjacent decor. He loves being able to afford the club membership, and a nice car and good clothes, both important when meeting with clients and presenting a certain image. It’s the opposite of the image he projected in his twenties, and even in his early thirties, before he started taking himself seriously and changed his bad habits. The attitude change lead to making more money, which fed further self-improvement. His building has a top of the line gym, and he works out almost every day when he doesn’t have a shoot, which is like a workout itself, often involving eight hours of gruelling camera work, plus another hour of set up and break down. 

He likes his life the way it is, and is looking forward to going back to the club and having a new experience with a different partner, to cleanse away his remaining angst about the way things went with Sid. He still thinks about that hour he spent with Sid way too much. It’s not normal for him, and defeats the purpose of the rotation of anonymous partners entirely. 

The last two days before his next appointment seem to pass way too slowly, and he doesn’t like how fixated he is on his anticipation. Usually he can put it out of his mind easily enough as a need that exists and is scheduled to be satisfied. By the time he’s in an Uber on the way to the club, he’s kind of a wreck, and not happy about it. 

He imagines it would be worse if he knew Sid was going to partner with him, and tells himself again that he made the right call. The sweaty, shaky feeling he has as he enters the club is more evidence that what happened with Sid was mildly traumatic, not just some rocking good time that left an impression. He’s glad he put in a note that means he definitely won’t be partnered with Sid tonight, or ever again. 

He tells himself this about fifteen times as he undresses, readies himself in the spa area, and heads to his assigned room in his robe and slippers. Tonight he’s in room 10. With a few exceptions for theme rooms that he personally finds corny, most rooms are the same: polished black ceiling, walls, and floor, panels hidden in the walls that contain the wet bar, couch bed, toys and ceiling-mounted props, and nothing in the room when Jay enters except for a single wooden chair, per his profile’s personalized settings. 

He puts his robe and slippers away and slides the blindfold on, unable to shake the feeling that Sid will have somehow gotten around his request and will walk through the door. Sitting in the chair, his bare ass shifting against the unforgiving wood, he tells himself he’s not hoping that will be the case. Not in the least.

He doesn’t have to wait long before he hears the door opening. His cock is soft as he tries to keep his breathing under control, his nipples two hard points against the chill of the room. The footsteps of the person who just entered are measured and soft, and Jay knows at once that it’s not Sid. He sucks in his breath when the person walks right up to him without speaking and grabs his hair. 

“You look like a whore,” the person says, muttering this almost shyly, without conviction. He’s a man; Jay can smell it as clear as he can hear it. He sounds older than Sid, and his hand in Jay’s hair feels much smaller than Sid’s did. 

Without saying anything more, his breath coming fast and reedy overhead, the man bumps his naked cockhead against Jay’s mouth and pushes forward, spearing inside. 

He’s only half hard, and something about this repulses Jay, but he sucks dutifully, waiting for this to get good. The man isn’t pulling Jay’s hair hard enough, and his cock isn’t very big, roughly the size of Jay’s and firming to full hardness on Jay’s tongue. He tastes like soap in an unpleasant way, bitter. But Jay can work with this-- Whatever. Best to have an unexceptional experience to cleanse the slate after the last one shook him up so much.

Then the man moans, and something about it makes Jay picture an old college professor of his, in a way that’s funny at first, then alarming, and finally so off-putting that Jay pulls back. He wipes his mouth with his palm, not bothering to hide his disgust, not even sure where it’s coming from.

“Oreo,” Jay says, without thinking about it too much, because this is a no-go and he doesn’t want anything to do with this guy’s cock, or with his embarrassing watery moans. 

“Seriously?” the guy says when the room’s lights snap on. Jay’s blindfold is too thick to let any light in, but he’s familiar with the sound, having used his safe word here a handful of times before. Doing so voice-activates a sensor that puts the lights on and opens an audio channel to security, so they can make sure the partner who got safe-worded out of the scene cooperates and they don’t need to intervene. 

“Sorry,” Jay says, scooting the chair backward so that it makes an ugly sound against the floor. “Uhh, can you go? Sorry, it’s not you--”

“What the fuck?” the guy says. “Your profile said you’re a longtime member.” 

“I am, just-- Fuck, I don’t have to explain myself to you. Safe word means get out, in this case, so go!”

“Jesus,” the guy mutters, but he leaves.

Jay’s shoulders jump when the door slams. He pulls his blindfold off and blinks around at the room, which looks much seedier with all the overhead lights on full strength, though it’s the same polished black that he saw under dim mood lighting when he entered.

“Are you all right, sir?” a woman asks over the audio channel.

“Uh-huh!” Jay says hurriedly. “Sorry, just not feeling well!” 

“No need to apologize. Please feel free to use the room for the remainder of your hour. As you know, we cannot provide a replacement partner once a safe word is employed--”

“I know that, it’s fine! I’m heading out, uh. Thanks.”

Jay is shaking as he puts on his robe. It’s not that the man stuck his cock in his face-- That’s standard stuff, and typically Jay loves it when someone approaches him without saying much, grabs him and starts using him however they like. It was something about the taste of that guy’s skin, the dorky way he moaned, even the half-assed way he held onto Jay’s hair. It was all wrong, bad. No big deal, though. It happens. Matching isn’t a perfect science. 

When Jay gets home he takes another shower, brushes his teeth for a long time, and finds the usual email from Greta in his inbox when he’s feeling suitably clean. He ignores it and doesn’t take the survey. He feels like getting drunk, so he makes himself a gin and tonic and throws a slice of lime in to keep it classy before heading into his cinema room with it. He’ll just watch some movies to take his mind off things. Bad matches have happened before. Something in the other person’s body chemistry or tone of voice will just rub raw against Jay’s nerves, no real rhyme or reason. It doesn’t mean anything.

After one drink, he’s feeling alarmingly horny. His body needed the appointment, even if he wasn’t mentally ready, and he’s getting hard in his pants just for tame nudity scenes in the movie he’s watching. He pauses it, puts his empty glass aside, grabs a box of tissues and reaches for his cock. He’ll just get this out of the way and continue on with his solo evening, fine. 

He tips his head back onto the futon, spreads his legs and strokes himself, telling himself he’s absolutely not allowed to imagine how tonight would have gone if he’d partnered with Sid again. Doing so will only make whatever he’s going through worse, surely. He tries to think about anonymous men, and when that doesn’t work he switches to his old high school tactic of imagining a monster with a huge cock fucking him. It used to get him off like a rocket, but those fantasies are too old and well-worn to do much now. In fact, nothing is doing much, even his nastiest and most guilty ones about Tori’s bitter husband watching her fuck him. 

He groans with defeat and relief when his mind returns to room 10, behind the blindfold, and how it would have washed over his bare skin like a wave of heat if he’d heard Sid’s footsteps and Sid’s cocky voice, taunting Jay for thinking he could get rid of him.

“Who’s in charge here?” Sid would have asked, his thumb hooked in Jay’s mouth and holding it open, rubbing against his tongue in taunting circles.

“You,” Jay would try to say, the word coming out muffled around Sid’s occupation of his mouth.

“And do you think putting a black mark on my name here means you earned my dick?”

“Nuh, no--” Jay says in the fantasy, filled with regret that feels too real while his hand moves fast on his cock.

“You’re in so much trouble,” Sid says in Jay’s fantasy, his voice scary soft while he strokes Jay’s cheek and shoves his thumb in deeper, making him choke. “So much.” 

Jay whimpers and he feels his jaw clenching as he tries to imagine how Sid would punish him for being an ungrateful brat after Sid offered him his cock if only he’d been good. 

The trouble is, he’s not sure what Sid would do. The magic of that encounter was Jay’s sense of being upended and not sure what was coming next at any point, this uncertainty perfectly counterbalanced by Jay’s belief that Sid knew exactly what he was doing and had everything under control, Jay especially.

He scraps the fantasy of being punished and focuses on the memory of Sid’s big cockhead just teasing into his mouth, too shallow, and how Sid held Jay back when he tried to strain forward and take more, demonstrating remarkable restraint. Jay is an amazing cocksucker. It even says so on his profile, under the special skills section, along with notes about his extra sensitive nipples and ears and the fact that he shivers all over when he feels good. 

He tries to imagine how he must have looked and seemed to Sid: shivery, overwhelmed, outmatched, wide open around a toy and crying because he was denied what he really wanted, that big cock that Sid probably held in his hand while he watched Jay’s ass taking the silicone version, squeezing at the base to keep himself hard, licking his lips and imagining how well he’d fuck Jay if Jay would just let him, how he’d pump him full of hot come until it was flooding out of him along with Sid’s spent, sloppy dick.

Jay groans when he comes, eyes closed, and doesn’t manage to catch all of his release with the tissue he prepared. Fuck, he thinks, when he can think again. And then: no, it’s fine, it’s okay. Returning to his best experiences at the club in his fantasies is normal, nothing new. Masturbation fodder is one of the things he pays for with his membership there.

The next time he visits the club, he specificies that he wants a woman for a partner. He feels a little stupid and weird about even this, because he’s never requested a particular gender for his appointments, but he’s also less anxious than he was last time as he heads into room 3 to meet his partner. This could still be an experience akin to the one with Sid, but at least there will be some superficial difference to take the edge off. 

“Oh, look at you,” his partner says when she enters, and it’s a comfort to recognize her voice, though he can’t place it to a name, possibly because she’s never given him one before. “Greedy boys always come back for more. Get out of that chair and crawl over here, I want you kneeling at my feet.”

Jay does as she asked, remembering how hard he’s gotten for this in the past, with this woman. She’s good, not corny, and she likes to talk, but never about anything personal. He’s not hard yet, but he’s sure it’ll happen. 

They do more or less what they did the last time they were together, which is a bit of a letdown, but Jay does manage to come on command when she tells him to, toward the end of their session. He doesn’t lose himself at all, except for maybe in the half a second when his dick first starts pulsing with release, but that’s okay. He didn’t expect to, still needs to work his way back to that mental space that Sid got him in and which was hard to come down from, his mind therefore guarding against it now. 

“Can I ask you something?” he says when they’re down to five minutes left in their appointment, his head resting on his partner’s pleasantly squishy thigh while she pets his hair. He didn’t really need aftercare, but she likes to give it and he wanted an opportunity to ask her this, anyway. 

“You can ask,” she says, her fingers pausing mid-stroke in his hair. “But I don’t really like being questioned by my subs, even in the comedown.” 

“Oh. Okay, uh. Just. Wondering if you’ve ever partnered with anyone in here who shook you up, like. In a way that stayed with you and sort of bled into your experience with other people?”

He feels her thigh stiffen under his cheek and he swallows, his skin prickling with goosebumps as the lingering thing in him that wants to please her cowers in anticipation of a punishment for being bad, though they have no time for that. 

“I’d rather not answer that,” she says, still stiff and no longer petting him. “It’s way too personal. As a regular, I should think you know that?”

She sounds judgmental, disappointed, and Jay feels like shit. He nods and sits up.

“Sorry,” he says. “I’m just going through-- Something-- Never mind. I’m sorry, forget it.”

“Good luck with it, honey.” She touches his cheek and stands, clearly done with this. “I’m heading out, you have a nice night.”

“Thanks, um. Thank you. Bye.”

Jay feels worse than he has in a long time on the ride home, slumped against the window in the backseat of an Uber. He feels like he has some kind of emotional fever, infected with things he doesn’t want to feel and which he doesn’t want to trace back to one intense encounter with a stranger at the club. He can’t deny that’s when it started, though. Part of him just wants to partner with Sid again and see if he can demystify the experience by attempting to repeat it, but he’s too worried that would only make things worse, and clearly he needs a break from the club entirely at this point.

He cancels his next two scheduled appointments, explaining that he’ll be out of town on business, as if Greta cares what his reasons are. It helps that he has work to focus on, with June so slammed with weddings that he even has a couple of weekday shoots scheduled. He sleep quality is still shitty, so he uses the extra time awake to edit. He’s itchy for sex and jerks off a lot, but being away from the club feels right. Everything’s fine until the end of the month, when disaster strikes.

A client whose wedding he shot two weeks ago came to him with a special request just before the shoot: that her parents’ wedding video footage somehow be interspersed with her own. She gave Jay creative license to do this however he thought it would work best, which annoyed him at first and then seemed like worthwhile challenge, also a sign that his reputation means his clients trust him with creative touches things like this. 

Another thing he’s been trusted with is the only copy of a VHS tape with the footage of his client’s parents’ wedding on it, which is why he’s panicking on a Monday morning when the VCR he keeps in his editing suite won’t eject the tape. 

He tries to stay calm, and does some research on VCR troubleshooting online, but there’s nothing that makes any sense to him or seems like it won’t possibly destroy the tape in the process of extracting it. He curses and punches his desk, sweating under his t-shirt as he tries to imagine explaining to his client that he destroyed her parents’ videotape before he got a chance to rip the footage, sorry about that. She’s a wealthy marketing manager who could easily destroy his reputation in turn if she decides he deserves it, and she seems like the type who might. 

In his frantic Googling about repair options, he comes across an ancient-looking website for a VCR repair shop in Milwaukee. He assumes the place probably went out of business years ago and that the website is a defunct relic, and jumps in his office chair when he calls the number on the site and actually gets an answer.

“Lightning Fast VCR Repair,” the guy on the phone says. “This is Rich, how can I help ya?”

Jay explains his situation and that it’s absolutely critical to extract the tape without damaging it. Rich says it shouldn’t be a problem and to bring the machine on over, they’re open till three. 

Jay still feels like this place existing at all, let alone in his city, is too good to be true. He drives there anyway, wary but desperate, his VCR with the stuck tape riding beside him in the passenger seat. The shop is in the warehouse district out by the airport, and Jay’s is the only car in the lot when he parks out front. 

He walks in with the VCR hugged against his hip and finds two middle-aged guys sitting behind a counter that’s cluttered with VCR parts, miscellaneous junk, and a computer that looks like something that’s as stuck in the mid-90s as the rest of this place. The walls of the shop are wood-paneled, and the place has a dusty, long-untouched feeling that makes Jay think of a Lynch movie. When he walks up to the counter with his VCR, he notices the guy on the left staring at him with wide-blown brown eyes, looking so astonished to see an actual customer walking in that Jay stops in his tracks. 

“Heya,” the other guys says, standing from his chair. He’s fat and balding, and much more friendly-looking than the other man, who is also fat and balding but somehow in a very different way, or at least in a way that hits Jay differently. “Are you the guy I just spoke to on the phone?”

“Yeah, I’m--” Jay glances at the dark-eyed man, who is now turning red, still looking at Jay as if he’s a ghost from the future who just invaded his stuck-in-time dimension. “I’m, uh. Here’s the machine.” He puts it on the counter and notes the name tag on the fatter guy’s khaki work shirt: RICH, the man he spoke to on the phone. He glances at the other guy, whose name tag says MIKE, and then up into his eyes, which makes Mike visibly startle. Jay frowns at him and feels his face heating, too. He refocuses on Rich. “Like I said, it’s extremely important to preserve the tape that’s stuck in here. I’ll be completely fucked if this tape gets destroyed.”

The Mike guy makes a semi-strangled throat clearing noise and Jay glares at him. Mike is staring down at the keyboard on the old computer, still bright-red and looking like he’s freaking out. Maybe these two were getting high in here before Jay came in. He can’t smell weed, but he’s not sure why else this dude would be acting so weird. 

“Hmm,” Rich says, pushing the front flap on the VCR in to examine the tape inside. “Okay, gotcha. Something real important on this tape, huh?”

“My client’s family video, yeah. I do wedding videos, and she wants this one incorporated into the one I’m editing for her. It’s her parents’ wedding footage. She told me it’s the only copy. I’ve never had trouble with this machine before. I have no idea why it got stuck like this.” 

“Could have more to do with the tape than the machine,” Rich says. “But we should be able to get it out for you, intact. I’m gonna go log this in. Mike, will you get his contact info?”

“Rich,” Mike says, sounding like he’s speaking through clenched teeth. “Wait--”

“What?” Rich turns back to Mike. He’s carrying the VCR toward their back room and looking annoyed. “What?” he says again when Mike just stares at him. Rich scoffs and goes into the back, leaving Jay alone with this other weirdo.

Mike turns to meet Jay’s eyes. He looks like he thinks Jay is going to kill him or something. Since hearing him speak, Jay’s heart has started beating faster, but he’s not sure why. 

“Here’s my card,” Jay says, digging one out from his wallet. “All the contact info’s up to date. How long do you think this will take? I need it done as soon as possible, but don’t rush it, because, like I said, the tape is extremely valuable and irreplaceable--”

“Yeah, I heard all that,” Mike says, with an edge of sarcastic irritation that makes Jay’s heart drop straight through him because, oh.

That voice.

He knows that voice, and suddenly Mike’s bright red face and stunned expression makes sense. 

This is Sid, from the club. Jay would bet his life on it. 

“You--” Jay says, his eyes flying open wide as he backs away from the counter.

“Yeah,” Mike says, shifting in his seat. He looks guilty, almost winces. “Me.” 

Rich reappears and writes a quote on a paper form while Jay and Mike stare at each other. Jay feels like he’s melting inside his clothes. He has a client meeting in half an hour and is dressed in a well-fitted button-up shirt and nice gray slacks, expensive shoes. Insanely, he finds himself worrying that Sid-- or, Mike, apparently --will take this as confirmation that he’s a prissy white collar type who thinks he’s hot shit. 

As if Jay cares-- What the fuck-- He’s got to get out of here.

“You okay, buddy?” Rich says, taking in Jay’s expression after handing him the quote sheet. 

“I-- Yes--” 

Rich glances at Mike, frowns, and looks at Jay again. 

“Anyway,” Rich says, resuming his seat behind the counter. “Should take just a couple of days. I think I’m going to have to order a new tool to pry the top of your machine off without hurting the tape, but I’ll know more when I have a better look at it. We’ll call you when it’s ready.”

“Right,” Jay says, backing toward the door. He meets Mike’s eyes again and feels a renewed flush of heat under his shirt and down the backs of his legs, making them feel shaky. “Well, um. Thank you.” 

“No problem.” Rich glances at Mike and frowns again before looking back to Jay. “You have a nice day, buddy.” 

“Sure-- Yeah-- Bye.”

Jay sort of falls out the door and into the blinding light of the hot summer day, feeling like he’s been thrown from one universe into another. He’s almost to his car when he hears the bell on the shop’s front door jangling sharply as someone follows him out.

It’s Mike. Jay turns to boggle at him and backs up against his car, not sure what to expect.

“Hey,” Mike says, and Jay shivers, because yeah, that’s the voice, that’s Sid, the person who fucked him up psychosexually and has him rubbing his dick raw nightly with frantic jerk offs that don’t do the trick. “Um,” Mike says, scratching at the back of his neck. “So. Funny seeing you here?”

“I can’t,” Jay says, groping blindly for his car door while staring up into Mike’s face. He’s handsome in the way that Jay expected, and his brown eyes are enormous. They’re also warm, even pretty, with long lashes. Jay feels himself gaping like a fish. 

“Look-- I don’t want to make you uncomfortable,” Mike says. He swallows and steps backward, holding up his hands. They’re huge, just like Jay remembers. He can also smell Mike’s sweat, faintly. It’s taking him right back to that room at the club and making his knees weak. 

“I’m fine,” Jay says.

Mike nods rather than pointing out that he’s clearly not. He lowers his hands to his sides.

“I just wanted to say sorry,” he says. “I asked for you, um, for the next time, and they said you’d told them not to put me with you again, so. I’m really sorry, man. That was my first time there and obviously it’s-- Not something I should be trusted with, uh. I haven’t gone back since they told me you’d--”

“I have to leave,” Jay says, feeling like he’s shrinking down into his shoes with every word Mike says. 

“Okay.” Mike blinks a few times. His eyes are fucking hypnotic. “Sorry, just. Wanted to say I’m sorry.” 

Jay nods and manages to break from Mike’s gaze to turn and try to remember how his car door works. He tugs on the handle a few times, curses, then remembers he needs to unlock it. Once he’s got it open he throws himself inside without looking at Mike again, and doesn’t even glance back at the shop until he’s almost pulled out of the lot. Mike is standing near the front door, big shoulders slumped, watching Jay go.

Jay is a mess during the client meeting, pit stains bleeding through the fabric of his fancy shirt. It’s really too hot for this outfit. It’s really quite a fucked-up, insane kind of world, he keeps thinking, his mind sliding back to that soft look in Mike’s eyes when he’d apologized, and the utter shock there when Jay first walked in. 

This is bad, he decides, when he’s sitting alone at a bar after going home to change into a t-shirt and jeans, still feeling like he’s in some kind of bizarre Lynchian dream as he slowly drinks the scotch he ordered, though it’s a weekday and not quite five o’clock yet. He feels he’s earned it, and after finishing one and a half drinks he starts to even feel a little better, because-- Whatever. Shit happens. He can handle this. It’s not like Mike just moved into his apartment building. The VCR repair shop visit will be a one time thing. Jay will pick up the machine in a few days and probably won’t even see Mike there when he does. Surely after Jay basically fled from him in terror Mike will be tactful enough to make himself scarce during the scheduled pickup.

Jay fidgets atop his barstool and tells himself that’s the ideal outcome. Even if they do have one more awkward encounter at the shop, after that he’ll never see Mike again, at the club or otherwise. Why would he? This whole thing has derailed his life enough already. Mike is a human danger sign. It’s unfair that he has such nice eyes, but Jay can deal with it. He can move on. This doesn’t have to mean anything if he doesn’t want it to.

But what if you want it to, some evil thing whispers. 

Drunk by the time he walks home from the bar, he uses what information he can find on the Lightning Fast website to search the internet for Mike’s full name. There’s not much, not even a Facebook, but he does find an article about a student film award Mike won almost twenty years ago. The information makes Jay moan under his breath with growing dread that also feels a little thrilling, in his current state. Mike makes movies, too, or anyway he used to? What the fuck does that mean? What is happening?

He goes to bed early and wakes up at four in the morning with a headache, tosses and turns in bed and thinks about how outrageous Mike was during their appointment. The shit he said about Jay’s father? Who the fuck does that? What a clumsy edgelord. And that condescending apology today, as if he thought he must have hurt Jay somehow and it couldn’t have been just that he was a disappointing lay. Which-- Okay, he wasn’t, and Jay’s reactions to everything Mike did to him certainly didn’t indicate that, but still. What an asshole. Arrogant prick. Jay grabs two handfuls of his hair and lets himself make a dry sobbing sound in the dark. He doesn’t want this man in his head anymore. Maybe after he picks up the VCR he can finally close this fucked up chapter of his sex life.

Two days later, he gets a call from Rich saying that his VCR is ready to pick up, they’ve extracted the tape without damage and it’s playing fine. Jay is filled with such relief that he’s almost angst-free as he drives toward the shop. It’s pouring rain, a bad summer storm passing over the city, but he can’t wait. He needs to hold that tape safely in his hands as soon as possible, and also needs to walk in and out of this shop for the last time. He’s spent the past two days obsessing over what Mike said to him both in the parking lot and at the club. He doesn’t do obsessing over people, at least not since college. He’s had enough. He can’t live like this. 

He had assumed that Rich making the call meant he’d be the one at the shop, which was part of why he raced to get there, but when he walks in half-soaked after jogging from his car in the downpour, only Mike is behind the counter. He’s standing, looking less stunned to see Jay than he did last time but no less nervous and shaken by it. 

“Hey,” Mike says when Jay just stands there listening to the rain pound the roof of the building, doing everything he can to ignore that he’s actually glad to see Mike, for some fucking reason. “Your repair is done.” 

“I know. Rich called me.”

“He did?”

“Yeah, just now. Isn’t he here?”

“No, he must have called from home.” Mike looks away and makes a face. “He’s off shift today, uh. I told him you’d rather pick it up tomorrow when he’s working than see me, but I guess he took matters into his own hands.”

Jay blinks. “You. Told him?”

“Oh-- I didn’t say why--”

“It doesn’t fucking matter,” Jay mutters. It’s not like he knows these people or will ever see them again. “Just-- I need the tape as soon as possible, so he made the right choice. What do I owe you?”

“Um. Hang on, I’ll get your machine and the bill.” 

Mike goes into the back. Lightning flashes outside, followed by a rolling boom of thunder that shakes the whole building. Jay feels like the tremble of it has transferred into his bones when Mike returns with his VCR, the tape resting on top in a paper sleeve. Jay’s name is written on the sleeve. He wonders if the messy handwriting is Mike’s. 

“So,” Mike says, setting the VCR down. “The problem was just a buildup in your control heads. Something about this tape set it off, maybe because it hadn’t been played in a long time? Anyway, they should both work fine now. We’re only charging you fifty bucks for the cleaning, and also, I, uh-- I made this for you.” 

Mike reaches into the front pocket of his work shirt and pulls out a flash drive. He holds it out between his thumb and forefinger, so Jay won’t have to touch him when he takes it.

“What is it?” Jay asks, not reaching for it, still stuck on Mike saying the words ‘control head.’ 

“I went ahead and ripped the VHS footage from the original cassette and put it on here for you. It’s pretty clean, for something from the 90s.” 

“Might that have damaged the tape?” Jay asks, snatching the flash drive and then regretting how bitchily he did so. 

“I made a VHS copy first,” Mike says. “Just in case. Do you want that, too?”

“No, I-- Thank you.” Jay pockets the flash drive, flustered, and looks down at the VCR and tape. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“I know, and you didn’t ask for it, so I’m not charging you.”

“No. You should--”

“Don’t worry about it. Fifty bucks is all you owe.”

Jay snaps his gaze back up to Mike’s, then regrets it. Mike’s eyes are intense. The lights in the shop seem dimmer than they were last time, just because the storm has made the sky dark outside. 

“That seems low,” Jay says, reaching for his wallet.

“Yeah, well. We’re not in this business for the big bucks.” 

“Why are you in this business?” Jay hands his debit card over and meets Mike’s eyes again, remembering what he said during their appointment. “You own it?”

“Yep.” Mike grins, a little smugly, catching that Jay remembered that from their time together. “Me and Rich were high school friends, we started this out of my garage when we were kids. I guess we’re attached to it. I own this building, so there’s no rent, and we do some freelance stuff on the side, too, to pay bills. This is basically just our excuse to hang out together all the time.” 

“Huh,” Jay says. 

Lightning flashes outside, and more thunder shakes the walls. Mike runs Jay’s card and hands him a receipt to sign. 

“So you’re a wedding videographer?” Mike says when Jay hands back the signed slip. “That’s cool.” 

“Is it? I went to film school. And now here I am. Doing this.”

“I looked you up.” 

Mike smirks at the expression on Jay’s face when he hears this. 

“You’re really good,” Mike says. “I read some of your reviews, uh. And I watched some of the sample videos on your website--”

“Why?” Jay asks, sharply.

“Because I have a huge crush on you.” 

Mike snickers after saying so. He’s just making fun of Jay, of course. Jay can feel himself getting red. He needs to leave, but can’t make his legs work. The rain is splattering the shop’s front door and window, making his imminent departure seem even less urgent. 

“But seriously,” Mike says. “Would you, uh. Come out with me sometime? On a real date?”

Jay just stares at him, waiting for the next round of mocking laughter. Mike stares back, looking expectant and then kind of pathetic, begging with his eyes. 

“Are you fucking joking?” Jay asks. 

Mike groans and tilts his head back to stare at the ceiling before looking at Jay again.

“No?” he says. “But I guess I’d better leave you alone. You won’t tell me, um. What I did wrong, when we-- Will you?”

“You taunted me about my father abandoning me,” Jay says, blurting this before he can stop himself.

“Oh jesus.” Mike winces. “I-- I’m really sorry. I thought you were into that shit. Um.” 

He wisely stops before saying that Jay sure seemed like he was into it.

“It’s weird for me,” Mike says. “This club thing. Like I said, I haven’t been back. But I liked it way more than I thought I would. With you.”

He’s fidgeting while he talks, shifting something around in his hand and tapping it on the top of the counter. Jay frowns down at the thing and sees it’s a bottle opener. 

“Why on earth would you think it’s a good idea to ask me out?” Jay asks, baffled by this person and aware that he should leave, also increasingly aware that he really doesn’t want to. Maybe he can blame the storm.

“I dunno,” Mike says, mumbling. “I thought we had good, like. Chemistry. And then-- I mean, c’mon. How fucking crazy is it that you walked in here out of the blue?”

“It’s a disturbing coincidence,” Jay says, wondering if he can somehow piece together a conspiracy theory about Mike being responsible for this VHS tape breaking his machine, sending him here. 

“I wasn’t sure you’d recognize my voice,” Mike says. “And then you did, and I was glad.” 

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“None of this does, but, listen. Do you believe in fate?”

“No! Look-- I have to go, I have to get back to this edit.” 

“Okay.” Mike looks down at the VCR. “So I guess that’s a no to my question?”

“What question?”

“I asked you out on a date?”

“I don’t date,” Jay says, though he knows he shouldn’t get into it, that he should just say no and leave it at that.

Mike’s eyebrows go up. 

“You married?” he asks.

“Of course I’m not married! I just don’t-- I go to the club, and I work. That’s it. I’m not looking for a relationship. Do you have a bag or something?”

“A bag?” Mike says, pausing in the nervous tapping he was doing with the bottle opener.

“For my VCR, please. And the tape. So they don’t get soaked.”

“Oh-- Sure. Don’t you have an umbrella?”

“I thought I had one in my car,” Jay says, turning to look at the continuing downpour. “But I couldn’t find it when I got here.”

“Ah. Okay, let me get you something to wrap this up in.”

Wrap this up, Jay thinks. Exactly.

His heart is slamming. When was the last time someone asked him out? He doesn’t give people many opportunities. He’s also never been asked on a date by someone who has already fucked his brains out so thoroughly that it altered his molecular chemistry. 

When Mike returns from the back room he’s got a cardboard box that’s about the size of Jay’s VCR, a big shopping bag and a black umbrella tucked under his arm. Jay stands watching, feeling defeated, as Mike carefully packs up his VCR in the box, places it in the bag with the tape and then puts some old newspapers over the top to protect them from the rain. 

“That should do it,” Mike says, looking up at Jay with some kind of crazy hope in his eyes. 

Jay wants to kick it away like a firework tossed in his direction.

But then again, he doesn’t.

“Thanks,” Jay says, regretting how soft his voice sounds. 

“I’ll walk you out,” Mike says, passing the bag to Jay. “Looks like you got soaked on the way in.” 

“I-- Yeah-- It’s raining pretty hard.” 

Mike grins but doesn’t make a joke at Jay’s expense about how obvious and stupid this comment is. He’s really attractive, Jay thinks, staring at Mike and hugging the packed-up VCR to his chest like armor. It’s unfortunate that this is happening, really just very unfair. 

Jay has to stay close to Mike under the umbrella on the way to his car, to keep from getting soaked. It’s a regular-sized umbrella, but Mike is a big guy. Jay can smell his sweat again. Jay is fucked. 

“Would you ever come back to the club?” Jay asks as he falls into the driver’s seat of his car, avoiding Mike’s eyes. Mike is lingering with the umbrella held over the open car door. 

“What?” Mike asks, shouting over the downpour. 

“The club!” Jay gives Mike a petulant look even as he surrenders. “I don’t want to date anyone, ever, but. If you came back to the club-- I’d request you.”

“Why’d you tell them not to put me with you again?” Mike asks. “Was it just the dad thing?”

“No-- I don’t know. I don’t like to talk about personal things, please, just. Answer my question.” 

“Yeah, I’d come back. For you.”

Jay looks away and nods, gripping the steering wheel.

“You’re letting the rain in,” he says. 

“What day do you want to meet up?” Mike asks. “At the club?”

“Uh-- A week from now.” Jay regrets that immediately. He needs some relief sooner than that. “Or, um. Actually. In two days?”

“Okay!” Mike waves and steps back, closing Jay’s car door for him and then bolting for the shop. He goes inside, shutting the umbrella on the way in and not looking back, as if that’s it, mission accomplished.

Jay starts the car. He looks over at the bag with the VCR and pats his pocket, feeling for the shape of the flash drive with the tape’s footage that Mike made for him. What if it’s actually gay porn? What if this whole thing is some elaborate joke?

He drives away trying to convince himself that it must be, but he still calls up the club as soon as he gets home and requests an appointment with Sid, even before he pops the flash drive into his computer and plays the old wedding footage, just to make sure.

Watching his client’s parents happily walk down the aisle feels weirdly obscene and voyeuristic, because Mike saw this, too, and everything Mike touches turns to sex, or at least that’s how Jay feels, both like he just got fucked and like he desperately needs the real thing, and only one person will do.

*


	3. Chapter 3

After making an appointment at the club with Mike’s alter ego, Jay expects to be a wreck for the next two days, constantly obsessing over the what-ifs and tilting back and forth between regret and excitement, but instead he’s strangely calm. He’s able to focus on finishing the edit for the client whose VHS tape sent him to Mike’s shop, and he’s more proud of the result than of anything he’s made in recent months, maybe even years. He’s almost nervous when he sends the file to the bride, hoping she’ll appreciate the way he didn’t just look for parallels to splice together but tried to incorporate some humor and gravity into the video, so that it tells a story that’s less obvious than the usual happily ever after one that people want. It’s something about nostalgia and how the passing of time is bittersweet even if your life has been good and you got the things you wanted from it. He wishes he could have used better music, and wonders about the person who shot the video of his client’s parents’ wedding back in the 90s. Are they still making wedding videos? Will he still be doing this in twenty years?

The bride responds to his email within an hour to say she loves it, she’s crying, she can’t wait to show her parents and to recommend Jay’s company to everyone she knows. 

_You have a gift_ , she says, which hits him in a couple of ways, one of which makes him think of that old article he found online about Mike winning a student film contest. What happened to make him settle for the VCR repair shop and whatever freelance work he alluded to? Jay wishes he didn’t care, but he can’t deny that he’s curious. Will he ask Mike about this when they’re at the club together, when Jay is naked and blindfolded and Mike isn’t? Probably not, but after last time it feels good to have some personal ammo to launch back at Mike if necessary. 

Jay has never wanted to potentially one-up his doms before. He’s never even known the real name of his doms before, unless his relationship with Tori counts. He feels sort of reborn to this experience on his way to the club to meet up with Mike, like he’s entering some new phase of it entirely, and he’s not sure if this is a good thing or just something that’s going to bite him real hard in the ass, eventually. 

After nearly a month with nothing but his hand to get off with, he’s ready for almost anything real hard that involves his ass, and he flings himself through his usual pre-appointment routine in the club’s spa area, skipping the sauna and hurrying to room 6 after changing into his robe, not even bothering with a shower. He primped extensively for this at home, shower included. His hair looks perfect, and when he slides the blindfold on he takes care not to disturb it, though Mike will probably wreck it soon enough. That’s part of why Jay is already getting hard as he takes his seat in the chair in the middle of the room, naked and blindfolded. The whole point of his perfect hair is that it’s an undisturbed canvas for Mike to fuck up in any way he sees fit. 

Jay is biting his bottom lip to suppress a smile by the time he hears the room’s door open and close. His heart starts racing at the sound of heavy footsteps, and there’s a moment when he’s afraid that it will be someone else, due to a screw up from club management or Mike backing out at the last minute, but then Mike speaks. 

“Get up.”

Jay doesn’t realize how tense his thighs are until he tries to stand. He manages it but almost feels like he’ll topple over, everything in him pulled tight and his cock starting to fill out embarrassingly fast. He’s jittery, swallowing, his hands pressed against his sides. 

He can feel Mike move closer, the weight of him in the air making Jay flush all over. Jay is entirely too exposed, which only makes his cock throb harder and continue raising like a flag of surrender. Mike’s breath is coming a little quickly, and he smells good, like some kind of fragrance he didn’t have on last time, maybe just aftershave. Jay wants to lean into the looming heat of him, or speak, or something, but he waits. 

“C’mere,” Mike says, touching Jay’s shoulder lightly as he moves around him, toward the chair. Jay hears it creaking under Mike’s weight when he sits. “Here,” Mike says, and it sounds like he’s slapping his thigh. “Sit. No,” he snaps when Jay tries to lower his ass onto Mike’s leg. “Not like that. Facing me, like this.” 

Then Mike’s hands are on him, guiding him to spread his legs and lower down again with his thighs wide open and his chest heaving, everything on display as he settles into Mike’s lap, straddling him. Mike grunts with low-level approval and keeps hold of Jay’s biceps after positioning him, squeezing them until it’s almost painful. Jay’s dick is so hard for this that it already aches a little, heavy-feeling and standing up with humiliating obviousness in the space between their bodies. Like last time, Mike is fully dressed in street clothes, based on the feeling of his jeans under Jay’s bare ass.

“So,” Mike says, breathing the word right into Jay’s face. His breath is minty tonight, no trace of beer. He loosens his grip on Jay’s biceps and strokes his fingertips down over Jay’s arms, making him shiver and lick his lips. Jay can feel Mike’s huff of amusement against his chin, and can picture his smug grin clearly. “How was your day?” Mike asks, skimming his hands down to Jay’s shaky thighs. 

“Muh,” Jay says, feeling mealy-mouthed and dumb for this already. “My day?”

“Yeah, tell me.”

Jay can’t tell if he hates this question or if it’s exactly what he needed. He fidgets until Mike grabs his arms and holds him still again. Even through his jeans, the heat of Mike’s body feels so good against the seat of Jay’s ass and under his thighs, and Mike’s hands feel even bigger than Jay remembers, almost creature-like in their hugeness. Jay is going to fall apart for this way too soon, but the embarrassment of doing so is part of what he needs, bad.

“Uhh, well,” Jay says. “I worked, and--”

“What sort of work?”

“Editing,” Jay says, annoyance creeping back in a bit. His chest feels tight. “A video, for. For a client.” 

“One of your wedding videos?”

“Uh-huh. That’s pretty much all I do.” He’s not sure why he said that. Volunteering extra information can’t be the way to go, here. 

“I see. What else?”

“What-- Else?” He feels like Mike is asking him what sort of work he used to do, or hoped to do, but that can’t be right. 

“What else did you do today?” Mike strokes Jay's arms again, and Jay can’t tell if it’s to calm him down or taunt him for how fucked up he already feels. He can’t remember the last time somebody touched him-- The nameless woman who dommed him here, probably. 

“That was pretty much it,” Jay says. “Oh-- And I watched a movie, when I was done working for the day. Before coming here.”

“Was it any good?” Mike asks, instead of asking which movie he watched. The absurdity of this makes Jay have to stifle a laugh. He feels nervous, like they’re on a date after all. 

“It was all right,” Jay says. “It was a horror movie from the early eighties, one I’d never seen before. Which, if you knew me-- That’s kind of a rare thing, uh. At least when it comes to English-language horror movies from that decade.”

He makes himself shut up, his cheeks on fire. Okay, maybe he hasn’t really talked to anyone except his clients in a while, either. Even during weekend shoots with Jack, they’re both too busy getting footage during the long work day to chat much, and exhausted enough at the end of the day that they both just want to go home. 

“What’d you have for lunch?” Mike asks, and again Jay almost snorts with surprised laughter. 

“Uhh, nothing,” Jay says. “I had a kind of brunch before I started working. I only eat one meal during the day.”

“So? What was it?”

“An English muffin with cottage cheese and tomato.”

“Ew.”

“Well.” Jay fidgets. He likes it when this makes Mike tighten his grip on his arms, and almost moans when he thinks about Mike rubbing his shoulders last time, how strong his hands felt when Jay was all liquified and mindless on the floor. “What’d you have for lunch that was so much better?”

“None of your business, slick. I’m asking the questions here.”

Jay laughs, can’t help it. His erection hasn’t flagged at all. Sitting on Mike like this makes the low rumble of Mike’s voice seem to travel through Jay’s body when he speaks, reaching every long-untouched corner within him. Jay wants Mike to keep talking even more than he wants him to touch his ass or his cock. 

“You’re so sensitive,” Mike says when he brushes a thumb over Jay’s nipple and gets a breathy gasp out of him. “Seems like I could just breathe on that cute little cock and it set off.” 

Jay doesn’t debate that. He’s never felt so ready to go completely under and has never gotten so close so fast. He flexes his thighs on top of Mike’s and sighs when Mike touches his other nipple with the same teasing gentleness. 

“How many people have fucked you here since the time we were together?” Mike asks.

Jay stiffens, yanked back from the ledge he’d wanted to roll over. There are personal questions, sticky and uncomfortable, and then there’s that one, which feels like a new kind of violation of what Mike is allowed to know about him.

“Hmm?” Mike says, rubbing the small of Jay’s back like he’s a skittish animal who needs to be reassured. “You’d better be good and answer my questions,” he says, his hand sliding around to grip Jay’s waist, loose at first and then with purpose. “Or you’re not going to get what we both know you need.”

Jay swallows. He can feel Mike’s cock against the seat of his ass, steadily getting harder for his squirming. He does need it. He can be good this time. He knew even before he walked into this room that he would be. 

“Just one,” he says. “A lady, here.”

“A lady, huh. Did she give you the same treatment I did? Some plastic substitute for the big dick you want in here?”

Mike shifts his hand to rest over Jay’s ass, tickling one fat finger along the crack so Jay will shudder all over for him.

“Mhmm-- Yeah,” Jay says. 

“I see. And you and I hooked up here over a month ago now. So you haven’t had what you need in a while, huh?” 

Jay considers not responding, then shakes his head slowly. 

“Yeah, I can see that.” Mike gives Jay’s ass a little swat and laughs when he gasps. Jay rocks forward without really meaning to, and the wet tip of his cock touches Mike’s gut. “Look at you, leaking onto my shirt just for this,” Mike says. Jay can feel Mike's eyes on his dick, and it makes him burn with a kind of pulsing shame that he wants to rub all over himself even as it spreads everywhere already. “You’re a mess,” Mike says, his mouth close to Jay’s. “You don’t just need something big and hard up your ass, do you? Nah, you need it to be hot and real, filled with come. There’s nothing you want more than to milk my big cock with your greedy ass, is there?”

“No, sir,” Jay says, without even meaning to. Maybe Mike won’t like being called sir. The thought that he might not makes Jay shiver with something close to real fear. He just wants-- He has to be good. 

“Goddamn,” Mike says, his lips bumping against Jay’s jaw as he mutters this. He kisses Jay there a few times, and takes a deep breath that he exhales against Jay’s throat. “You smell good.” 

“So do you,” Jay says. His arms are hanging at his sides, where Mike left them, and his hands keep twitching with the need to touch Mike, at least his shoulders if nothing else. Mike is fully hard under the seat of his ass now, and he feels enormous there, fucking perfect. 

“Okay,” Mike says. He nips at Jay’s earlobe and laughs when Jay moans. “Get down on your knees, on the floor, between my legs. You’ve been good so far. Gonna let you get acquainted with my dick.”

Jay moans again, nods and hurries to obey. His legs are even more weak-feeling than they were when he rose from the chair, and he grabs Mike’s knees clumsily as he lowers himself down between them, breathing harder already for how much he wants this. 

“Gimme those hands,” Mike says, and he takes hold of Jay’s wrists, lifting his arms up so they’re spread at shoulder-width over his head. “Now go ahead and take me out. Use your mouth.”

Jay whines and flushes with new heat that sinks down from his throat and spreads across his chest. He’s done this before, but he’s not good at it, and even though they’re relatively fixed now it’s still humiliating to know someone is staring down at his teeth while he struggles to get a fly open with them. 

“There you go,” Mike says when Jay presses his face in between Mike’s legs and rubs his cheek against the shape of Mike’s cock, groaning for the heat of it on his face through the denim. “Fuck yeah, look at you. Knew you were a pain slut, but it doesn’t say cock slut on your profile, does it?”

He’s petting Jay’s hair, letting him be an embarrassing mess just for the feeling of Mike’s cock through his jeans. Jay is slobbering on the denim, not sure what’s on his profile in the moment. All he knows is he needs this, and Mike knows he needs it, and that it seems like Mike is actually going to give it to him. 

“Now get to work,” Mike says, taking a handful of Jay’s hair and pulling hard. It hurts, and Jay lets out a cracked little shout out of approval as he’s yanked up toward the button on Mike’s jeans. Mike is slumped back in the chair enough that his gut is mostly out of the way, but Jay can feel it on the top of his head as he mouths pathetically at the button, nicking the waistband of Mike’s jeans with his teeth and not getting anywhere. “You can do it,” Mike says, lifting his hips just enough to remind Jay of his prize of if he does, his cock bumping against the tender skin on Jay’s throat. 

Jay’s mouth is wet and messy already, and he hears himself whining when he gets frustrated but can’t seem to stop. When he finally gets the little corner of denim that will release the button between his teeth he bites down hard and grunts as he yanks his head back, sweating under his arms and at the small of his back. He sort of growls in victory when the button finally pops open, but now he’s got to refocus on the zipper. 

The taste of cheap metal on his tongue makes him shiver. He’s still hard, his cock dribbling steadily. Mike has stopped petting his hair and is back to holding both his wrists, his thumbs stroking over the delicate bones there in a way that makes Jay think about how Mike could snap them if he wanted to. The thought makes him newly desperate, his mouth soaked as he drools all over Mike’s crotch and tries to capture the zipper between his teeth.

“Just a little more,” Mike says, squeezing Jay’s wrists when he’s got the zipper halfway down. Jay feels like sobbing but is determined not to give up, not sure how long he’s been at this. His knees ache on the cold floor, and he feels like he’s wasting precious minutes when he could have access to Mike’s dick already if only he was doing a better job. 

“Oh jesus,” Jay says, with immense relief, when he’s finally pulled the zipper down low enough that Mike’s cock pops out against his cheek. Jay feels like he could love Mike for not wearing any underwear. He wouldn’t have survived having to gnaw boxers out of the way, too.

“Good, juh--” 

Mike stops himself, maybe before saying Jay’s name. Jay breathes against Mike’s cock, can feel the heat of it and isn’t sure he has permission to use his mouth yet. Mike slides his hands from Jay’s wrists and threads his fingers through Jay’s, holding his hands. The difference in the size of Mike’s hands against Jay’s is dizzying. Jay tilts his head up toward Mike and offers himself blindly, ready for whatever. When Mike gives his hands a little squeeze, it feels like he’s asking if Jay is doing okay. Jay squeezes back to say yes, glad that Mike didn’t use words.

“You’re too fucking cute for an uptight little painslut,” Mike says, sounding sincerely sad about it. He lowers their joined hands until they’re resting on his thighs. “Go ahead. You earned it. Get yourself a taste of that cock, show me how much you want it.” 

Jay moans and sort of dives for Mike’s cock, mouth first, no hesitation or shame remaining in him. He's earned it. Mike said so. 

Mike tastes good, clean enough but also like he hasn’t showered since this morning, or maybe the night before, and he’s bigger than Jay remembered, his jaw already aching as he tries to take more of Mike in, coughing a little due to excitement. He hears himself moaning and realizes he maybe hasn’t stopped moaning since Mike gave him permission to do this. When his shoulders jerk with another cough, his hands twitch and he remembers that Mike is holding them, tight, not letting Jay pull free from the strangely intimate feeling of being joined that way while he sucks Mike’s cock. It’s good, though, because it’s like Mike is controlling every aspect of this, and Jay can only be along for the ride.

“Oh fuck, yeah,” Mike says when Jay calms down enough to show Mike that he’s good at giving head, taking him in so deep that his eyes burn and leak behind the blindfold. Mike groans and squeezes Jay’s hands when he especially likes something Jay is doing to his dick, and it feels like the sweetest praise, hitting Jay with a full-body throb of validation every time. Jay twitches his fingers weakly in Mike’s grip and lets himself get lost in the feeling of how much he loves this. He can’t remember the last time it felt so good, and when Mike presses his legs in around Jay’s shoulders to make him feel completely trapped, held and pinned and choking on Mike’s dick, Jay’s cock throbs so powerfully that for a second he thinks he could come untouched just for being used like this. 

“Gonna come in your mouth,” Mike says, his voice rough and his thighs starting to shake, palms slick with sweat as he keeps hold of Jay’s hands. Jay is surprised he’s so close already, but he supposes Mike was being teased the whole time Jay struggled to get his jeans open, with Jay’s face bumping against Mike’s trapped dick while he worked. “You hear that?” Mike asks, giving Jay’s arms a little tug. “You’re gonna, hah, yeah-- Gonna swallow that come, you want it?”

Jay tries to nod, then squeezes Mike’s hands hard in confirmation. Mike grunts and lets one hand go so he can clamp his around the back of Jay’s head and fuck into his mouth a few times before unloading with a grunt that sounds almost pained.

Jay is sorry it’s over, too, but he swallows everything down gladly. Mike is buried so deep that he doesn’t taste it. He pulls back when Mike has spent every drop down his throat, lapping at Mike’s shaft as he releases it from between his lips, and sucks in big lungfuls of air that feel amazing, like ecstasy-level drugs have been pumped into the room through the ventilation system. Even breathing is getting him off. Mike keeps hold of his hand and smears his wet cock against Jay’s cheek. 

“Fucking-- Nnh, fuck, that was good. C’mere, you little cocksucker. Lemme kiss that filthy mouth.” 

Jay lets Mike pull him into his lap again, this time with both of Jay’s legs slung to the side in the same direction. Mike wraps Jay up in his arms and presses his lips to Jay’s, which are puffy and salty, well-fucked. Jay parts them gladly for Mike’s tongue, moaning at the feeling of being penetrated again. He needs more, deeper, harder, needs to be fucked so badly that he’s not even sure he could stand right now without Mike’s help. There’s nothing left in him but the need. He holds Mike’s face in his hands and kisses back wildly, letting himself be an embarrassing slut even for this. 

“Damn, you taste good,” Mike says, muttering this against Jay’s panting mouth before moving down to lick his throat. “Fucking-- Got all sweaty, didn’t ya? Working hard for me.”

“Yeah,” Jay says, curling himself against Mike’s chest, brainless for how good it feels to be held. He’s not even worried about how desperately he wants to come. It’ll happen if Mike wants it to. Otherwise, it won’t, and Jay doesn’t have to think about it either way. All he can do is feel it, and let Mike take what he wants. 

Mike gives him a kind of tongue bath while he recovers from his orgasm, licking all over Jay’s neck and ears, biting into the meat of his shoulders and biceps. Jay moans, whines, and finally whimpers, his greedy hands kneading at Mike’s chest. He loves big tits, always has, and Mike has some that are just the right combination of firm and soft. Jay wishes he would take his t-shirt off. It feels tighter than the one Mike wore last time, and there’s no second shirt unbuttoned over it. 

“Now,” Mike says, grabbing Jay’s jaw and angling Jay's face up toward his, as if Jay can see into his eyes even through the blindfold. Jay shivers and waits for what’s next, remembering the unflinching intensity of Mike’s stare even in a mundane setting. “That was good, but you did something bad, before. You made me wait so long. Gonna punish you before you get any more of what you want. If you take it well, I’ll tear your ass up with this dick, just like you want. Fuck you hard enough to make you feel it for a month, just in case you leave me hanging again.” 

Jay just nods, ready for anything. He clings to Mike’s neck when he stands, lifting Jay in his arms like he weighs nothing. 

Mike shifts all of Jay’s weight to one arm with a grunt and activates one of the wall panels. Jay can hear the couch bed thing lowering toward the floor. He sighs against Mike’s shoulder, floating into territory he’s not sure he’s known before. He wants to lay himself totally bare for this person, and in the moment it doesn’t even scare him. He feels like he lost a competition that he didn’t really want to win, and admitting this to himself is euphoric. 

“Put yourself over my lap,” Mike says when they’re on the couch. “Face down. Gonna spank you for being a brat and trying to run away from what you want.” 

Jay arranges himself happily, sighing when his cheek is pressed to the couch’s canvas slipcover. He loves being spanked. He’s so hard against Mike’s thigh, and it’s not easy staying still, but he resists the urge to hump himself against the denim. He’s ready to be good. 

“Now,” Mike says, smoothing his big hand over Jay’s upturned ass cheeks. “Don’t be ashamed if you need to use your safe word. I hit pretty fucking hard.”

Jay shivers from the back of his neck down to his heels. Jesus, he hopes so. He won’t say a word, no matter how hard he has to take it, least of all that one.

He still shouts with surprise at the force of the first blow. Mike doesn’t ask him to count, and doesn’t give him a chance to recover before he’s smacking his hand down again, merciless in both speed and strength. Jay drools for it and feels himself start to drift, the pain keeping him in the real world while the answering throb of pleasure in his dick takes him somewhere better at the same time. It’s like being pulled out to sea by an undertow, only to be thrown back onto the shore by a wave. He can’t explain why he loves it so much or why almost nobody can do it just right, just like this. 

Some time later, Jay is sobbing into the blindfold. He’s not sure when it started. Mike is still spanking him, but he’s taking breaks between each blow now, to breathe hard and soothe his hand over Jay’s burning ass cheeks. Jay made no attempt to count, but he knows he’s taken a lot. He hears how pathetic he sounds when he wibbles against the couch and tries to wipe at his wet eyes, forgetting the blindfold is there until his hand slides across it. 

“Jesus fuck I’m hard,” Mike says, breathless. Only then does Jay register the rod of pressure against his chest as Mike’s cock, straining underneath him and probably stimulated by Jay’s sobbing, which racks through his body in slowly calming waves. Mike is petting him now. The spanking might be over. Jay’s ass is on fire for the most part, actually numb in some spots. 

“Ready to be fucked now?” Mike asks, dragging his fingers up through the back of Jay’s hair, disordering it.

“Yes,” Jay says, his voice a cracked little thing he barely recognizes. He sniffles and tries to sit up, but he can’t really move, so he just flops back onto Mike’s lap after some feeble shifting about. “Puh, please--”

“You don’t have to beg,” Mike says, so soft that it doesn’t even feel like he’s taunting Jay, who can’t really tell right now anyway. Mike is still stroking his hair. It feels good, and so do the hot tears clumped between Jay’s lashes behind the blindfold. “You did well,” Mike says. “Gonna give you what you want now.” 

Mike reaches for something, activates a wall panel behind the couch. Jay just sniffles and lets total resignation rule his body. He feels like they’re floating in a blank space with no walls or light, the only color and shape here contained by their bodies. He gasps against the couch and brings his fist up to his mouth when he feels Mike’s wet fingers sliding between his sore ass cheeks, sinking down to his hole to get him wet and ready. 

“Nice and tight,” Mike says, kneading Jay’s shoulder with one hand while his other hand works between Jay’s ass cheeks, one big finger pushing inside him. Jay moans weakly for the praise, already trying to clench up around him and pull him in deeper.

Jay has always liked being fingered if he doesn’t have to think about it too much. He’s not thinking about anything now, his hips lifting and bucking without his permission by the time Mike has two fingers working in him. Mike seems to be in no hurry, his other hand petting over Jay’s back in a way that makes him feel owned, because Mike touches him like he’s admiring something that belongs to him. Jay feels helpless and well cared for. His favorite. Every tease of those fat fingertips against his prostate makes him sob with the fear that he might come, but otherwise he’s emptied of expectation, just taking it. 

“Are you in ragdoll mode already?” Mike asks when he’s extracted his fingers and lifted Jay up into his lap, Jay’s back resting against Mike’s chest and his legs spread open around Mike’s thighs. “Hmm?” Mike says, pinching a nipple hard to get Jay’s attention.

“Ah,” Jay says, and then, very much without meaning to: “Mike.” 

Mike stiffens a little at the sound of his name, then exhales and starts petting Jay’s flushed skin all over, his hands roaming about madly. Jay hopes he hasn’t done anything wrong. If he can’t have Mike’s cock inside him after all that he’ll die. His head lolls on Mike’s shoulder and he tries to capture Mike’s hands, but they keep moving over him, out of reach. 

“You’re gonna sit on my cock,” Mike says, muttering this into Jay’s ear like a threat. “You understand?”

“Yuh, yes--”

“Get me slick first,” Mike says, and then he’s taking Jay’s hand, uncurling his fingers and dumping something cold and wet onto his palm: lube. “Go ahead.” 

Mike spreads his legs so that Jay’s will be open even wider around them. Jay can feel the heat of Mike’s dick against the seat of his balls, straining up from under him. His fingers shake when he reaches for it, and they both groan when his hand closes around it, slicking lube up and down the shaft.

“Fuck, yeah, baby,” Mike says, petting Jay’s sides. He sounds pretty gone, too. “Like that, mhm, that’s right. Get that cock ready for you. S’all yours now, you deserve it.”

Jay does a dry sob thing at that, wanting to believe it. He lets Mike tilt him forward so that his hands are braced on Mike’s knees, his back arched and presented as Mike guides himself into place, teasing the wet head of his dick around Jay’s worked open hole in lazy circles and holding Jay in place when he tries to push down onto it. Jay hiccups with mild distress when he can’t get it in him with gravity alone.

“Okay, you’re right,” Mike says. He lets go of Jay’s waist and spreads Jay’s ass cheeks open with one hand, settling his cockhead into place with a sigh, like he’s already satisfied and not aching for relief like Jay is. “You’ve waited long enough. Now you can have your prize. Take that dick, just stay bent forward like that so I can watch you take me in.”

Jay moans and presses down, his breath sticking high in his chest when he feels the insane width of Mike’s cock stretching his rim open until it burns, pushing into him. He chases the heat of the pain and digs his fingertips into Mike’s knees for traction as he presses his hips down again, wiggling them back and forth when it seems impossible to take more. Mike is so fucking thick and hot inside him already, holding his ass open wide around just a few fat inches as Jay tries to work himself down lower. It’s overwhelming, so good. He wants more.

Mike groans and inches his hips up just a little, to help. Jay is panting, open-mouthed, shaking all over with the exertion of just doing this much, getting Mike into him. He has to keep reminding himself to relax, the position he’s in making it hard. Mike whispers praise and encouragement, touching Jay’s back and brushing his fingertips around the obscenely stretched rim of his ass, groaning along with Jay for the dirty thrill of it.

A bloodbeat of pressure is pounding in Jay’s skull by the time he’s worked himself down to the base of Mike’s cock, finally settling to a full seat and letting all the tension in his body drop away. He just pants and feels it, more full than he’s ever been and soaked in sweat from the effort of getting there, his head hanging, exhausted. 

“Careful,” Mike says. His voice is tight, and his hands are warm on Jay’s sides as he guides him upright and then back onto his chest. “You, ah, fuck-- Yuh, you’ll get a head rush, mph, c’mere.”

Jay does feel dizzy. Mike is good to know this. He’s just so good, and so fucking deep inside Jay, even more so when Jay settles back onto Mike’s chest with a guttural groan, shifting his hips back and forth to feel the insane width of Mike in new and better angles, splitting him open. It feels so good. Jay can’t process anything else, though his chest jumps as if shocked with electric heat when Mike pinches his nipples, and his spread-apart thighs do the same when Mike’s hands squeeze harshly into their soft interiors. 

“Rock yourself on that cock,” Mike says, murmuring this into Jay’s ear. “Yeah, make that ass feel good. Ride my dick, s’good. Mhm, fuck. You’re tight, Jay. Feels good.”

The combination of Jay’s name being spoken here, plainly, like that, as if Mike owns it, and the angle at which Mike’s huge dick is pressing against his prostate, is enough to make Jay start to come. He shouts in alarm at the force of it, and moans gratefully when Mike grabs his cock with an astonished curse and starts stroking him through it, rough and perfect. 

“Fuck,” Mike whispers when Jay is drifting in the aftermath, barely aware of anything except that he belongs to the person whose chest is heaving beneath his sweaty back. “Fuck, yeah, you-- You came untouched on my dick. Didn’t even need me to pound you. Gonna do it now, though, okay? Hmm, Jay?” Mike pushes his hand across Jay’s still shuddering chest, thumbing one nipple and then the other. “I bet you like being fucked hard after you come like a slut on a big cock,” Mike says, shunting his hips up so Jay will shout for him. “Fuck yeah, you do. Climb off for a sec. Gonna put you on your back so I can see your face.” 

Jay is like jelly in Mike’s hands, moving wherever Mike wants him to. He whimpers at the loss of Mike’s cock inside him, then moans with relief at the feeling of being laid out on his back, his legs spread open wide, Mike’s hands gripping his thighs as he pushes Jay's knees up against his shoulders. Then he’s sinking his cock back in, long and slow and perfect. Jay is too sensitive not to whine at the intensity of it, his hand coming up to cover his mouth. He’s not complaining. It’s just so much, and Mike keeps coming, still filling him, flooding him with hot, thick pressure until he feels like he’ll burst apart.

Jay returns to himself a bit just as Mike is coming apart, slamming into Jay’s ass and hissing curses, spittle or sweat flying from him and onto Jay’s face. He’s pounding into Jay so hard that Jay wonders if the smacking sounds of their bodies can be heard from the hallway. He remembers that the rooms are sound-proofed and feels himself grinning, newly glad about this. Mike’s face is hovering just over his as he works his cock into Jay with rhythmless need, spanking Jay’s sore ass with his balls on every inward thrust. He must notice Jay’s dumb grin, because he touches Jay’s lips with shaking fingertips, makes a noise like he’s been punched in the gut, then comes inside him with a long exhale, dropping down onto him as his he unloads, his hips still rolling, working it in deep. 

“Fuck,” Mike says after Jay has held onto him for a while, sweltering hot and sticky underneath him but in no hurry to move. “You okay?”

“Mhm,” Jay says, nodding. He pushes one hand into Mike’s hair and clings to the back of his neck with the other, holding him in place. 

“You know how long it’s been since-- Since I’ve come twice in the same hour, even?” Mike lifts his head after asking, touching his nose to Jay’s. “I’m not a young man, Jay.” 

Jay stiffens a little and wiggles his hips under Mike’s weight. Mike is still inside him. Jay’s ass is an overstimulated mess, between the spanking and getting fucked that hard, by the biggest dick he’s ever had.

“We probably shouldn’t use our real names,” Jay says, nudging at Mike to get him to pull out. 

“You did it first,” Mike mutters. He sits back with a groan, and Jay chews his bottom lip to hold in a whimper at the sting of feeling that big cock sliding out of him, globs of come spilling out with it. 

“Sorry,” Jay says, goosebumps soaring over his skin as the heat of Mike’s body pulls away. “I, ah. I didn’t mean to, I’m sorry--”

“Shh,” Mike says, probably hearing that Jay is still in head-spinny sub mode, at least enough that he doesn’t want to upset Mike right now. Mike stands from the couch and pets Jay’s cheek, leaning down over him. “Can I take it off?” he asks, touching the blindfold.

“What-- Why?”

“‘Cause I want to. I already know what your eyes look like.” 

Jay isn’t sure how to argue with that. His mouth moves stupidly for a moment, and he thinks about his rules, how strict they are and how long they’ve been in place, serving him well. He thinks about all the rules he’s already broken for Mike and removes the blindfold with a sigh, blinking up at him. 

The sight of Mike’s eyes hits Jay hard in his present state, and he feels his half-expelled breath sticking in his chest. Mike looks worried, sweet, kind of sad. That’s just how his eyes are, maybe. His cheeks are flushed, and his face is close to Jay’s. 

“Gonna get some stuff to clean us up,” Mike says. His voice is soft in a way that Jay should find insulting. “You need anything from the bar?”

“I could use a drink, sure.” 

Mike nods and kisses Jay on the lips like it’s nothing, a little peck that communicates something in a language Jay isn’t sure he speaks. He watches Mike walk across the room in only his t-shirt, and when he returns to the couch with a damp cloth and a bottle of liquor from the wet bar, Jay takes the opportunity to ogle Mike’s cock. Even soft, it swings between his legs like a cudgel, and even after having it so hard he couldn’t take another thrust, the sight of it makes Jay’s mouth water.

“Want me to get some glasses?” Mike asks, lifting the bottle.

“That would be the classier option.”

“Maybe I don’t feel like being classy.” Mike sits down beside Jay and holds the damp rag out of reach when he tries to take it. “No,” he says, firmly enough to get Jay flat on his back again, wanting to be good. “I’ll do it. Just lie still and let me clean up my mess.”

Jay does as he asked. It feels nice anyway, to be turned this way and that and to hear Mike moan in sympathy when he cleans Jay’s ass, rubbing the cloth in careful circles around his hole and sore ass cheeks. Jay sighs for how good it feels to be handled gently there after such a hard fuck. It aches in the best way. He’s almost asleep on the couch by the time Mike is finished. 

“The bottle’s on the floor here if you still want a drink,” Mike says.

“Maybe in a minute,” Jay says, reaching shyly for Mike instead.

Mike stretches out on the couch so that Jay is pushed in against the back cushions, sheltered by his body. If there was anyone else in the room, they might not be able to see Jay at all as he shrinks into the feeling of being guarded there, letting Mike touch his face and his lank hair. Mike is staring down into Jay’s eyes in a way that would normally bother him even outside of sex, but Jay lets him do it. Mike just gave Jay the fuck of his life. He deserves it. 

“How much time do we have left?” Jay asks. 

“Dunno,” Mike says. He touches Jay’s sideburn, his ear. “How are you feeling?”

“Fine, you?”

“Just fine?” Mike boggles as if he’s offended, and Jay can’t help but snicker. “What-- What the fuck, fine! You came on my dick like a rocket, I didn’t even have to touch your cock--”

“Okay, okay.” Jay grins and stretches his legs against Mike’s, arching his back a little. “I feel really fucking good, just. Thank you.”

“Uh. You’re welcome. I meant it when I said it’s been a while since I got hard again that fast for someone, since I came twice with them, like.” Mike moans and rubs his palm over his eyes before looking down into Jay’s again, his head propped up in his hand, elbow pressed into the couch cushion. “You make me feel younger than I am,” he says, mumbling.

“Or this place does,” Jay says. “Isn’t this just your second time here? Both with me?”

“Yes, bitch, but it’s not this creepy place. My friend told me about this club. I thought I would hate it. He pulled some strings to get me in here, even. Told them I have a real big dick, I guess.”

“You do have a real big dick.”

Jay laughs again when Mike gives him a wounded sort of look. Mike smiles more slowly and settles his hand on Jay’s shoulder. 

“I really like you,” Mike says, looking grave again. “Is what I mean.”

“Oh. Well. You don’t know me, so. I guess it’s just been a while since you fucked a tight ass.” 

“Don’t be disgusting.”

“I’m-- Not? What?”

“You walked into my shop, did you-- Pull some strings to figure out who I was? Or what?”

Jay takes a moment to process that and rears backward in horror when he has.

“Oh my god,” he says, trying to sit up. Mike holds him down easily, his brow creasing. Jay is still too gone on him to really fight, but he glowers at Mike when he flops down against the couch again, huffing. “You think I stalked you there? Fuck you. I didn’t. It really was a coincidence.”

“Or fate.” 

“No-- Just. Stop. Or I’ll leave.”

“I don’t think you want to leave.” 

Jay makes a cracked, wordless sound that’s not quite a protest. Mike isn’t wrong about that. When he leans in to kiss Jay on the mouth, Jay only bites him a little, softly. Mike moans into Jay’s mouth like he’s all in favor of being bitten. 

“Do you want to hear about my day now?” Mike asks when he pulls free in mid-kiss, making Jay feel dumb for swooning toward his lips like he wasn’t ready to stop yet.

Mike smirks at the look on Jay’s face and drags a hand through his hair, fucking it up even further. 

“You want a boyfriend,” Jay says. “I’m not that.” 

“Don’t tell me what I want, you prissy little fucker.” 

Mike somehow manages to say this sweetly. Jay deflates again and scoots a little closer, tucking his head under Mike’s chin so he doesn’t have to keep getting disarmed by Mike’s magnetic eyes.

“Anyway,” Mike says, stroking his hand over the back of Jay’s hair. Jay wishes it didn’t feel so good. He’s not going to be ready when the chimes start. “My day was okay. I met up with Rich in the morning, to help him strip his uncle’s deck. Rich is sort of a handyman. I guess I am, too. I do all kinds of shit for money.”

“I actually thought you might be a professional dom after our first time here,” Jay says. 

“Yeah?” Mike sounds delighted, and his hand moves a little faster in Jay’s hair. “Fuck, well. What can I say. I’m good at all kinds of shit.”

“You’re good at talking yourself up, that’s for sure.”

“Yeah, yeah. Run that bitchy little mouth off for me, green eyes.” Mike tugs at the back of Jay’s hair until he’s looking up into Mike’s face again, glaring. “You know I get off on it,” Mike says, with such weird, gravelly energy that Jay’s cock twitches with interest. He wonders if Mike felt it, since it’s currently resting soft against Mike’s thigh. 

“You said you looked me up,” Jay says, fidgeting. “Well. Fine, I looked you up, too. You went to film school?”

“Uh-huh. Just like you, shorty. Like I said. Fate.”

“Oh, shut up. But seriously. Do you, uh. Do any creative work, anymore?”

“Not really. Too expensive and too hard to find actors in Milwaukee.”

“Ugh,” Jay says, curling up against Mike’s chest again. “I know." He shivers a little at the small of his back, knowing he should be alarmed by how good it feels to have Mike’s big arm wrapped around him while they talk like this. “I haven’t even tried to write a script in about ten years. I hate it. It’s such a fruitless exercise in futility and disappointment, but nothing makes me feel worse about myself than not making movies anymore.”

Jay keeps his face hidden after saying so, eyes closed. He clutches at Mike’s t-shirt, feeling newly vulnerable. He shouldn’t have said that. But it felt good to put words to it, for some reason. Maybe because he stupidly thinks or at least hopes Mike will understand.

“Yeah,” Mike says, after he’s been quiet a while. His hand has gone still in Jay’s hair. “I wish I did even as much as you do, with the wedding stuff. I just fall into shit. I was ambitious, once. Now I’m just like, why? Who the hell did I think I was, back then? A couple of teachers blew smoke up my ass early on. I guess it was fun while it lasted, thinking I was, uh. An artist, or whatever.”

“You can still be an artist,” Jay says, maybe talking to himself, his voice muffled against Mike’s chest.

“Me and what army? That’s what making movies feels like. You need a fucking army of helpers, and a military-level budget, too. Or it’s just like having a dream and being told you should be able to realize it with some pipe cleaners and chewing gum and you’re a hack if you can’t. Which is such bullshit.” 

Jay can feel Mike’s heart beating faster against his cheek. He reaches up under Mike’s t-shirt and tentatively pets his side, shifting his hand toward Mike’s chest until Mike flinches a little. 

“It is bullshit,” Jay says. “I know exactly what you mean. And people who were handed their careers on a silver nepotism platter act so fucking proud of themselves. I’m glad that’s not me, though. I’d rather be a loser nobody than a fraud who thinks he’s hot shit.” 

“You’re not a nobody.” Mike reaches down to tilt Jay’s face up toward his again. He seems to like eye contact. Jay normally doesn’t, but he likes the way Mike looks at him, as if he’s really interested, concerned, whatever. “You’re like this impressive success, actually,” Mike says. “I don’t think I found a single bad review for your company.”

“Oh, they’re out there, believe me.” Jay shuffles in Mike’s arms, again worrying about when the chime will sound. Maybe the blow job, spanking, and fuck all passed more quickly than they’d seemed to when he was in subspace. Maybe they have a whole half hour left to talk like this. “I would argue most of them are undeserved,” he says, of his few bad reviews. “People get bitter when things out of your control go wrong, and they want someone to blame.” 

“I want to hear all your fucked up work stories,” Mike says, grinning. “I bet they’re amazing.”

Jay opens his mouth to say: they are! Yes, thank you for asking! He’s getting stupid, giddy, feeling like a kid again, too. He knows he needs to reel it in and wrap this up. 

“Well,” he says, “Part of my good reputation is based on not badmouthing my clients. So.”

Mike snorts. “Who am I gonna tell that you did? Do I look like someone who’s friends with a lot of young brides?”

“I don’t know the first thing about your life.”

“Except that I went to film school.”

Jay frowns and flushes, starting to feel weird about being held by this person who keeps shifting between showering him with praise and calling him out on things like that while also calling him a little bitch. 

“It’s actually kind of hilarious that someone who allegedly refuses to even go on dates films weddings for a living,” Mike says, unflinching.

“Wow, you are definitely the first person ever to make that observation about my life!”

They glower at each other, then Mike grins like this is part of his flirting routine and kisses Jay between his eyes. 

“You gotta go on a date with me, man,” Mike says, squeezing Jay’s bicep. “After this, or whenever-- Please? I’m so into you, it’s gross.”

“You can’t ask things like that of me while I’m like this,” Jay says, instead of: okay, sure, which is not advisable under his current condition. He’s compromised.

“Like what?” Mike says, as if he doesn’t know this. 

“Like-- ! I mean, you must have dommed people before me. You know how the sub gets, just. Mixed up about reality, almost.” 

Mike’s smile comes slowly, in a worrying way.

“I don’t know about all this dom and sub talk, really,” Mike says. Jay would bet he’s lying, just trying to prove he’s too cool for the usual rules. “All’s I know is you’re the first person who’s ever told me I fucked you so good that you got mixed up about reality. And, honestly? I’m gonna take that to my grave as the greatest thing anyone’s ever said about me.”

“Hilarious,” Jay says, though Mike doesn’t seem like he’s joking. “You don’t actually seem stupid, so you must know what I mean. I’m in a vulnerable place. You just fucked me in a very particular way. I’m naked, you’re not. You’re-- Big. And I’m not. You can’t ask a person out like this, you just-- You can’t!”

“Well, I tried to do it normal-style at the shop--”

“And I said no! Drop it.”

Mike opens his mouth as if he’s going to argue further, then just shrugs one shoulder and sighs. He starts talking about Rich’s uncle, the guy whose deck they’re redoing. Jay listens, eyes closed, enjoying the sound of Mike’s voice and the way it sort of rumbles against the couch cushion where Jay is resting his cheek. The way Mike strokes his hand up and down over Jay’s arm as he speaks is also nice, and Jay feels pitched out of his enveloping calm unfairly when the chime sounds overhead.

“Dammit.” Mike sits up on his elbow and frowns down at Jay. “You really won’t let me buy you dinner after this? At least let me take you to Culver’s. Who doesn’t want a butterburger and some cheese custard after such a magnificent fuck?”

Jay tries not to laugh but can’t help it. That was cute. Mike is charming. It’s going to be a problem. 

“I can’t,” Jay says, hoping Mike will let him leave it at that. He wants to give in, but the feeling will pass, just like the craving for the kind of junk food Mike is tempting him with. Jay always regrets it immediately when he gives in and pigs out. He’s never sorry that he didn’t. 

“Then we’ll do this again next week,” Mike says, staring down at Jay with his big, sad eyes. “Yeah?”

“I only do an appointment here every other week,” Jay says. “It’s too expensive otherwise.” Normally he’d brag about his restraint and only needing sex with a partner every other week, but Mike won’t buy that, with good reason. 

“Two weeks?” Mike says, looking stricken. “God-- Fine, whatever. In two weeks, then. If you want. At least let me be your regular sex club thing until you get sick of me.” 

Jay isn’t ready to make that promise. His eyes scan down over Mike’s body, and he shifts his legs against Mike’s, chewing his lip. 

“I want to touch it while it’s soft,” he says, muttering this under his breath while staring at Mike’s dick. 

“Uhh. My cock?”

“Yes, that.”

“Well. If you do that it’s gonna start to get hard again, and then I’ll have a real awkward walk out of here when those chimes go off.” 

“Mhm. Okay, fair.” 

“You could do whatever you want with it if you come on a date with me,” Mike adds, and he winces when Jay glares at him. “I know. Sorry. I’ll stop asking. I wouldn’t want to date me, either.”

“It’s not you! It’s--”

“Yeah, I’ve heard that before. Okay, I’m going. You’ve suffered enough. Tell me something, though.”

Mike takes hold of Jay’s chin and makes him meet his eyes again, his thumb stroking over Jay’s beard, then his lips. 

“Do you always wear that blindfold?” Mike asks. “For everyone?”

“Yes. Didn’t you see it in my profile?”

“Yeah, I guess I did. Maybe it’s why I picked you, a little. So I wouldn’t have to be looked at. Why do you do it, though?”

“Why-- Why not? It’s just something I like.”

“So you can hide.”

“Huh?” 

“Nothing, just. Your eyes are your best feature. You shouldn’t hide them.”

Jay scoffs. “My eyes are sunken and colorless,” he says, repeating something he was once told by a drunk guy whose feelings he’d hurt at a bar. 

Mike looks scandalized, his head rearing back, brow creasing. 

“Are you crazy?” he says. “Colorless-- What? Who told you that?”

“Nobody.” Jay sits up, feeling dizzy again, and not in the pleasant way he did earlier. “This is-- Everything about this is stuff I swore I’d never do here. Or anywhere.”

“What stuff? Talking after?”

“If you don’t know what I mean, I don’t know to explain it to you. Look, this happens sometimes. I’m not sure why. People think I’m interesting for like two seconds. Then they get to know me, and I’m not. Trust me.”

Mike sighs and gropes for his jeans, sliding off the couch. Jay watches him dress, feeling like he should hold his hands over his dick. He normally doesn’t have to confront his own nakedness as his partner prepares to leave, the blindfold concealing it from him. 

“Two weeks,” Mike says, holding his finger in Jay’s face after he’s put his socks and boots back on. “Okay?”

“Okay,” Jay says. He already feels hollowed out by the long wait ahead, but it’s part of the thrill. This would be ruined if it was some dependable, everyday thing. If there were dates-- Forget it. He’d find out Mike’s taste in movies is awful, which he already has some evidence for, though it’s not like _Rocketeer_ is a bad movie, as far as he remembers. It’s just not one a grown man should list as his favorite, in Jay’s opinion.

“Can I kiss you goodbye?” Mike asks, standing near the couch with his huge arms hanging at his sides in a defeated way. 

“You probably shouldn’t,” Jay says, because of how badly he wants to say yes, please.

“You know,” Mike says, narrowing his eyes. “For someone who waits naked and blindfolded for strangers to walk into these rooms and do whatever to him, you’re a pretty big coward.”

“Oh, right.” Jay springs off the couch, feeling stupidly naked but also ready for a fight. “You know me so well, clearly. I’m just terrified of-- What, exactly, in this case?”

“You tell me,” Mike says, stepping closer. 

Jay holds his ground, keeping his expression as neutral as possible as Mike looms into his space. Mike is breathing in a slightly agitated way that shouldn’t be hot. Nothing about him should be, Jay thinks, except maybe his big cock and hands and his eyes, which are objectively beautiful. Unfortunately. 

Jay shouldn’t let Mike kiss him, but he opens his lips for Mike’s pushy tongue even as the two-minute warning chimes sound overhead. Mike kisses in the same way he touched Jay when he was spread over Mike’s lap and fully surrendered: like he owns him. Jay is a little bit hard by the time Mike pulls back to give him a breathless look that feels like an I-told-you-so. 

“I could tell you didn’t walk into my shop like that on purpose,” Mike says. “I don’t know why I said that, before. Like you might have looked me up and-- What makes it amazing is that you didn’t. It just happened, to us. And you recognized my voice. I’ll never forget the look on your face.”

“You’d better go,” Jay says. “I’m not paying the fine if we’re late clearing out.” 

Mike rolls his eyes but lets go of Jay’s shoulders and steps back. He keeps his gaze locked on Jay’s as he walks backward toward the door. There’s something so menacing about him, even as he retreats. Jay should not want to fling himself head first into that kind of danger.

“Till next time, shorty,” Mike says. “And if you need anything between now and then, you know where to find me.”

He turns and finally goes, and Jay races over to the wall panel to get his robe and deposit the blindfold. He doesn’t like the reminder that he could just go to the VCR repair shop and see Mike whenever he wants to, no club fee required. It’s exactly the kind of temptation he doesn’t need. 

Jay feels strange on the trip home, and is unable to keep up even a pretense of polite conversation with his chatty Uber driver. He keeps expecting to feel a big drop, or some kind of delayed regret about what went on, but he’s light on his feet by the time he’s home in his apartment, digging a carton of low fat sorbet out of his freezer. He eats half of it while leaning on his kitchen island and staring out his big kitchen windows at the city lights. 

_What are you afraid of?_ he thinks, refocusing on his reflection. He used to know, and should be more bothered by no longer feeling so sure.

*


	4. Chapter 4

Mike caves first, which pleases Jay greatly even as he sneers down at the text messages that start popping up on his phone late on a Tuesday night the following week:

_hey there, this is Mike from Lightning Fast VCR repair_

_just wondering if you have anything else you need worked on_

_maybe I’ll even give you a discount_

_I did not give you permission to contact me by phone_ , Jay sends back, annoyed that he already knows this will derail the evening of catch-up work he’d planned on. He’s too glad to hear from Mike to just ignore the texts. 

_permission huh_  
_sounds like you want your turn to dom me shorty_  
_I hate that word btw_  
_(dom. it makes my skin crawl)_  
_but yeah bro you could_  
_I’m versatile and highly adaptable_

_Are you also drunk?_ Jay asks. He’s smiling down at his phone, glad Mike can’t see his face.

_mhmm mildly_  
_I’m at a boring party_  
_don’t you feel like all your friends got so boring in their 30s_  
_or do you even have friends ?_

_Stop wasting my time and send me a dick pic_ , Jay sends. Mike’s assumption that he doesn’t have many friends is obnoxiously accurate. Lately he just has Tori and Jack, who kind of works for him. _Make yourself useful_ , Jay adds, not minding the idea of being a dom via phone. It’s tedious and tiresome in person, but he does like being condescending and giving orders. 

Jay isn’t sure what he’s expecting in response. When Mike’s reply doesn’t come after five minutes, he tries to get back to work and reminds himself that the queasy, heart-racing feeling he’s gotten even from this dumb exchange is why he doesn’t do relationships. They take up too much space in his brain, and in his chest, and they cut into his work hours while giving nothing but stress and frustration and occasionally good sex back, which he can get anyway, sometimes, from the club--

His eyes fly open when Mike’s response finally comes, five minutes and fifty-eight seconds after Jay’s last message. It’s a picture of Mike’s dick, just slightly hard and cradled in his palm, presented for Jay’s consideration. Jay licks his lips. He’s never been so attracted to a guy’s not-fully-hard dick before. Mike’s still looks so fucking big, like this.

_want me to make it harder for you jay?_

Jay hears himself guffawing stupidly. He’s glad they’re not doing this in person, though he wouldn’t say no to feeling Mike’s cock get fully hard while resting on his tongue, if they were. 

_Are you doing this in the bathroom at some party?_ Jay responds, not wanting to stroke Mike’s ego just yet. 

_nope left the party. home now. all yours_

_That was fast ??_

_party was down the hall from my apartment. It was lame, like I said. All too glad to leave._  
_so? Want to see me harder or what?_

_yes_

_hmm, thought so. Send me yours first._

This is the height of bad decision making, Jay thinks, pushing down his sweatpants to free his cock, which is filling out for the sight of Mike’s and for everything about what’s happening right now. He gives himself a few strokes and sighs, realizing only once he’s touching himself how wound up and needy he’s felt all day, or maybe for the past few days. He finally let himself beat off to the thought of Mike the night before, and came too fast for the reckless transgression of doing so as much as for the memory of how good it had felt to be yanked around by him inside that room at the club. 

_god it’s cute_ , Mike sends, after Jay has sent a pic of himself almost fully hard. _gonna suck you off so good next time we’re together. Could do it right now if you let me come over_

_Do you always come on this strong?_

_uhhhh no_  
_I haven’t come on to anyone in like 10 yrs_  
_till you_

Jay stares, touching himself and not really sure how to interpret that.

 _Are you trying to tell me you can usually just sit back and wait for people to start begging for your cock?_ Jay sends, when nothing more comes from Mike.

Jay’s phone starts ringing. It’s Mike calling.

“No,” Jay says, frowning down at his phone. This is too far, too much, and he hates talking on the phone.

But he answers after the fourth ring.

“What,” Jay says, sighing. 

“I wanted to explain about that last comment,” Mike says. His voice is somehow even better over the phone, and just the sound of it makes Jay’s cock start to leak, precome beading over the head. “But first, uh. Let’s get each other off first.”

“You cannot come over to my place, you lunatic.”

“I know, I know. I meant over the phone! C’mon, please. I like your voice.”

That strikes Jay right in the chest. Did he mention that he likes Mike’s voice? Can he just tell, somehow, and is that why he’s feeding the compliment back to Jay, to manipulate him into thinking they have some kind of mystical connection? Or does he actually like Jay’s dorky nasal voice as much as he claims to like his squinty, barely-green eyes?

“You have weird taste,” Jay says. 

“Are you touching yourself?” Mike asks. 

“I haven’t put my dick away,” Jay says. “Yet.”

“Oh, are you telling me this is my limited time chance to impress you? Fine, okay. Tell me about the nastiest thing you’ve ever done.” 

“How is me doing that supposed to impress me-- What?”

“You’ll see. Go ahead and do what I asked. I know you’re still my good little bitch.” 

“You sound drunk.”

“Yeah? And you sound like a slut who sent me a dick pic because you like doing what I tell you to.”

Jay bites his lip and closes his eyes, jacking himself faster. God, why is it true? How does this asshole always know what to say? Maybe it’s just the voice. Maybe the words never mattered as much as Jay thought.

“Mhm, that’s what I thought,” Mike says when Jay doesn’t correct him. Jay can hear Mike’s grin. He wonders where Mike lives, then tells himself not to think about it, because it doesn’t matter. “So go on and do like I told you to,” Mike says. “Tell me about your nastiest past deed. Sex-wise.” 

Jay snorts. “Were you afraid I was going to confess to a murder or something?”

“Yeah, I dunno, you sort of seem like the type.” 

“Do I?” Jay knows he shouldn’t be flattered. He can hear Mike understanding that he is and laughing a little. “Anyway, uhh. Well. I’ve had people eat my ass after they came in me,” he says, his voice getting a little softer and quieter with every word, as if anyone is around to hear. Mike could have him on speakerphone. He could be recording this for blackmail purposes. He could ruin Jay’s life. This succession of thoughts has Jay’s dick throbbing, precome sliding down over his fingers. 

“Are you serious?” Mike says after a pause. “That’s amateur shit. That cannot be the dirtiest thing a guy with a lifetime sex club membership has ever done. One whose profile says it’s okay to leave bruises as long as they’re not on his face.”

“It’s not a lifetime membership-- You’ve got my profile memorized, huh?”

“Isn’t that just due diligence? So I’ll know what to do in the heat of the moment, without hesitation?”

Jay snickers at the phrase ‘due diligence’ being used during phone sex, and flushes down through his chest for how hot he finds this. Mike knows what he’s doing and it’s no accident. Jay felt it both times he stepped into the room at the club, right away.

“Okay,” Jay says, swallowing. “I’ve done worse stuff. I’ve let myself go too far. I’ve had sex injuries.”

“No shit,” Mike says. He sounds angry. “I don’t want to hear about you getting hurt.”

“Well then what are you asking? I don’t like bodily fluids, if you’re after stories about that kind of stuff.”

“Fine-- Scratch that. Tell me about the first time someone fucked you.” 

Jay sniffs. He could talk about the first guy who fucked him, but he’s not going to.

“My ex-girlfriend,” Jay says. “She had to talk me into it.”

“But you knew you’d like it.”

Yes-- Sort of. “I knew I’d like it from a man,” he says. “Wasn’t sure how I’d feel about her doing it.”

“So who was the first man?”

Ugh. This. Jay is too hard and wants to hear Mike’s ‘explanation’ for why he hasn’t come on to anyone in ten years too badly to think up a story that isn’t the real one, though. 

“My married college professor,” Jay says, mumbling.

“Oh my god! Seriously?”

“Yes, seriously. I was young and dumb. I didn’t even like him, just. I dunno. Maybe I did. This is not hot, can we talk about something else?”

“Okay, agreed. But I’m putting a bookmark in that for later.”

“Why do you need to know this stuff about me?” Jay asks, thinking of their first meeting, Mike’s questions about movies and music. “Why can’t you just fuck me?”

“That’s not how I operate, you heartless slut. Tell me, uh-- About your best time at that club over all those years. Until me, of course.”

Jay snorts. “Of course.” He sighs. “I guess it was the first time I really like disassociated. In a good way. Because it’s happened in bad ways, too.” Why does he keep tossing in excess personal information? He needs to call his sister or something, needs to make more of an effort not to get so bottled up that he’s tempted to spout this shit to a stranger with a nice dick. 

“So,” Mike says. “Was it with a man or a woman?”

“I have no idea. That was part of it. They didn’t speak. They touched me, but mostly with stuff, like-- Toys, whips, whatever. They scared me. That’s what made it so good.”

“Jesus,” Mike mutters.

“Yeah. I couldn’t handle doing that kind of thing every time. Even the aftercare was fucking spooky. But they did it.”

“They did-- What, exactly?”

Jay sighs. “It’s hard to describe, but I was, like. Gone, I couldn’t even remember coming, though I definitely did. I just kind of woke up on my back on that couch and my face was wet and I was just like sobbing around this ball gag thing. They took that out, and when it was gone they put their fingers in my mouth-- They had been wearing gloves before that, like, leather ones, but suddenly this was their bare hand. And they just-- Stroked my teeth? And my tongue, too, and my gums. It was like they were petting me on the inside, ugh. And my mouth made these wet little noises. It was comforting, and, like, hot. I don’t know. This is embarrassing to talk about. Tell me yours, I guess.”

Mike is quiet for a moment, maybe carding through his many sexual accomplishments. 

“I jerked off this stranger in a bar,” Mike says. “He did me, too-- This was last year. We had been looking at each other, and then we went to the men’s room, and it was really like, impersonal, and we barely looked into each other’s eyes after we came. I told my friend about this a while later, and how I’d been obsessing about it since it happened, and he told me about the club where I met you. I thought it would be like that, like. Generic and gross and dirty. But then I walked into that room and, fuck. You just sitting there like that, waiting for me, just, your skin, and your little dick getting hard when I walked toward you--”

“Yeah, I was there.” Jay sighs. He needs to come and this isn’t going to do the trick. He almost wants to tell Mike to stop calling his dick ‘little’ when it’s perfectly average, but maybe they all look small to Mike, considering what he’s working with, and also for some reason it’s getting Jay going, whereas usually he’s pretty neutral on dick-shaming stuff. “What would you do to me if I told you my address,” he asks, smoothing precome down along his shaft with his thumb. “If I let you inside.” 

“Hmm,” Mike says. “Do I have all night?”

“Sure. Knock yourself out.”

“In that case I’d make you wait to come until you were crying and begging for it. Then I’d make you wait longer. I’d come inside you so many times. Get you fucking sloppy and leave you wet. I’d let you lay there wibbling and hard while I napped between fucks. And you wouldn’t dare touch your cock without my permission. You’d just cry and wait for me to fuck you again, and you’d try so hard not to come on my dick. But you would, finally, and you’d beg me to forgive you--”

“You like it when people beg,” Jay says, getting close, his hand stripping fast over his cock for the sound of Mike’s voice in his ear more than anything. 

“Yeah,” Mike says, almost sheepish.

“You like making me cry,” Jay says, thinking of how good it felt, both times.

“Mhm. Yeah.” 

“You saw me in that chair and you decided to fuck me up.”

“That’s what you wanted--” 

“You’re a bad man,” Jay says, his balls pulling up tight. It’s been a long time since was the one delivering the shame and humiliation to someone else, and god it’s never felt so good. “You’re bad, Mike. You liked hurting me. You liked making me like it.”

Mike whimpers and then exhales powerfully into the phone. Jay thinks he’s probably coming but doesn’t even care. Jay definitely is, spilling over his hand with a groan. 

“Jesus,” Mike says, and just hearing his voice as his dick pulses out the last drops makes Jay groan again. “You-- Did you finish?”

“Uh-huh,” Jay says. He feels himself grinning. He’s still in his desk chair at his computer in the editing suite, but he at least managed to remember to twirl around and let his come splatter on the floor rather than his equipment. “Thanks, that was-- Thanks.”

“Yeah.” Mike clears his throat. “You don’t really think that, right?”

“Think-- What?”

“That I’m some bad guy who likes knocking people around--”

“Oh god.” Jay withholds a different sort of groan. Of course Mike is immediately trying to ruin this. One downside of doing it over the phone is that he can’t see how blissed out and happy Jay is, or anyway was. “No, I don’t-- Think that. I don’t think I know you much at all. And that’s fine.”

“Huh. Well. Too bad, I was gonna tell you some really juicy shit about my life.”

“Like-- What?”

“You actually want to know?”

Jay hesitates, swivelling back and forth in his chair, in no hurry to get up and clean his come off the hardwood, though he probably should be.

“I’m curious,” he admits, reaching up under his shirt to toy with his nipples. Maybe he’ll teach Mike that he likes having them teased right after coming. Maybe Mike will figure it out on his own.

“Well.” Mike clears his throat. “I got divorced a couple of years back.” 

Jay stops touching his nipples and holds the phone away from his face so Mike won’t hear him sigh. Boy is this not what he wants to talk about. He’s not sure what he expected. 

“And that guy at the bar, the rando who exchanged hand jobs with me in the men’s room?” Mike says when Jay returns the phone to his ear. “He was the first guy I’d done anything with since college. I’d tried go on a few dates with women after my ex left, but that just-- Wasn’t happening. And then the bar thing freaked me out, but I kept thinking about it. And then I tried the club. So, that’s what I mean about not coming on to anybody in like ten years. ‘Cause I was with my ex for eight.” 

“Okay,” Jay says.

Mike snorts. “That’s your response? Okay?”

“What do you want me to say? That I’m sorry? Divorce is always for the best if one person wants it. Whether the other one does or not.”

“Are you-- Fucking lecturing me, you little prick?”

“No. Look-- I’m bad at talking about personal shit. I see what you meant now, about not being out on the scene or whatever for like ten years. Thanks for explaining.”

“Tell me about your college professor.” 

Jay knew that was coming. He sighs and spins around in his chair once before getting up to grab a box of tissues so he can clean his jizz off the floor. It’s past time to start acting like an adult. Why is he even on the phone with his person? Worse-- Why does he want to answer that question?

“Was he hot?” Mike asks when Jay is silent, kneeling on the floor and wiping up come with tissues. 

“No,” Jay says, and he grins when Mike laughs. 

“How old were you?”

“It was the start of my junior year, so, uhh, twenty-one? I’d just broken up with the only girlfriend I’d ever had, and she was still my co-producer on this movie we were making together. So it was a real shitty time.”

“This is the girlfriend who fucked you? I mean-- Literally, like, with a strap-on?”

“Yep.”

“Huh. What did you even look like at twenty-one?”

“Like I was barely old enough to drive.”

“Mhm. And how old was this pervert professor?”

“He wasn’t-- Well. He was old, like. Forties.”

Mike snorts. “I’m forty-two, by the way.”

“I-- Yeah, and? I meant he seemed old to me back then. He _was_ old, too old, for me, back then. I’ll be forty soon.”

“Soon in what, like five years?”

“More like three months.” 

“Bullshit.”

“It’s not bullshit!” Jay is sitting on the floor with a handful of come-crusted tissues, talking to some man who’s trying to flatter him by saying he looks younger than he is, which was true for all of his life until the past year or so. He spent so many years in his teens and twenties hating his youthful appearance, and it hit him like a freight train to finally see himself aging, but maybe it hits everyone that way, whenever it comes. 

“Anyway,” Mike says. “I guess the whole thing fucked you up, huh?”

“You say shit like this, and then you act like I’m the asshole when I calmly explain my feelings on divorce.”

“Which is that it’s preferable to marriage, yeah, got it.”

“That’s not-- Anyway, yes, of course it fucked me up, I dropped out of school and was extremely depressed and didn’t have sex again for like ten years.”

Why did he say all that? For the same reason he’s doing any of this: he’s lonely, and Mike is smart enough to sense this, so he’s taking cruel advantage. Jay stretches out on his back on the floor and stares up at the ceiling of his office, lips clamped shut. 

“My ex and I barely had sex for the last two years of our marriage,” Mike says, blurting this like he owes Jay an equally embarrassing confession. “She left me for our friend. He’s a martial artist.”

Jay laughs, then feels terrible.

“Sorry,” he says, still trying to stop laughing. “Just-- That phrase. Martial artist. There are real people who refer to themselves that way?”

“Yes, he’s a karate champion. And go ahead and laugh, I don’t care. I know my life is a joke.”

“Aw. No, it’s not. I’m sorry. I wasn’t laughing at you.”

Mike sighs. For a while they’re both quiet. Jay puts one hand over his belly and strokes himself there, imagining Mike leaning up over him like he did while they were stretched out on that couch together.

“We’re still friends,” Mike says. “All three of us.”

“That’s good,” Jay says, trying to picture this martial artist guy, also Mike’s ex-wife. “I’m still friends with my ex, too. Not the professor. My college girlfriend, Tori. She introduced me to the club, actually.”

“Hey, that’s hilarious.”

“It is?”

“Yeah. Because Len is the one who introduced me.”

“Your ex-wife?”

“No, god, she’d hate that place. Len is her new husband, our friend the martial artist.”

“Oh my god.”

“Yes,” Mike says, sighing. “I realize there’s a chance that means he fucked you there. He stopped going when he got with my ex, but I know you’re a long time member. So was he, for years.”

Jay doesn’t know how to respond to any of that, or why he finds it a little bit hot. 

“Honestly,” Jay says, knowing he’ll probably regret this, “Both times with you are the best I’ve ever had there. That’s why I said I didn’t want to be matched with you again. Because I was freaked out by how new it felt. In a good way. After all those years-- I think I was bored. You felt different.” 

Mike exhales in Jay’s ear. His breath is choppy in a way that makes Jay wonder if he’s beating off again. 

“Yeah,” Mike says. “I know.”

“You know? But it was your first time there.”

“I mean that this whole thing with you makes me feel like I’m coming back to life after having been dead for a while.”

“Well.” Jay isn’t sure how to respond to that. It’s too much, pretty corny. “It’s not-- A whole thing.”

“Why not? If you really want me to leave you alone, I’ll hang up. Just say so.”

Jay thinks about it. He gets up off the floor with a grunt and walks out into his empty apartment, thinking about how quiet it will be here once gets off the phone.

“No,” he says. “I don’t want to hang up yet.”

“Me either,” Mike says. “I’m in bed. Are you?”

“I’m headed in that direction. I was working when you called.”

“Aw, but you answered?”

“Obviously I did, yes.”

Jay undresses in his bedroom while Mike chatters away on speakerphone, sounding like he hasn’t had anyone to talk to in a while either, friends who throw parties down the hall from his apartment notwithstanding. He tells Jay about Len the martial arts master, and about his ex, how they met in college and how Mike was slavishly in love with her for a long time, and how she spent the last two years of their marriage trying to convince him he wasn’t anymore, as if she knew better than he did, which he now admits she did. Jay rolls onto his side in bed, his phone still on speaker and resting on the pillow beside him, Mike’s voice rumbling against his cheek. After listening to Mike for a while Jay gets cozy enough that he starts babbling about Tori, telling Mike how he’d been trying to convince himself she was the smart decision for his life, because he was attracted to her and they were friends and the sex was pretty good.

“The movies we made together, on the other hand, were horrible. And that was like-- Representative of what was missing, for me, more than anything. We didn’t have that like, soul connection that really good collaborators have. And I don’t even believe in souls, really, but--”

“You don’t?” Mike squawks, sounding sincerely upset about this in a way that makes Jay laugh.

“Not in the afterlife sense, no,” he says. “Not in the sense that, like, your soul leaves your body when you die and becomes a ghost.”

“Okay, but how can you know that’s not what happens?”

Jay laughs again, then stops when he gets the sense Mike is serious.

“Wait,” Jay says. “You’re not, like, religious, are you?”

“Jesus fucking christ no, but I think ghosts could be-- Interesting. If they were a thing. And I’m not saying they are, but--”

They talk like this for at least another hour. Jay isn’t sure how long it’s been going on by the time he starts to drift off. He checks his phone and sees the battery is low, and that it’s half past one o’clock in the morning.

“I haven’t stayed up this late in a while,” Mike says, sounding sleepy. 

“I stay up till three or four all the time,” Jay says. “But not-- Talking to someone, usually.” 

“Hmm. Are you falling asleep?”

“A little bit.”

“You sound like you are.”

“Sorry,” Jay says. He has his knuckles pressed to the bottom of his phone, letting the vibrations of Mike’s voice rumble across them. If Mike were really with him, he’d want to cuddle. He’d want breakfast in bed in the morning, too, probably. He’s probably a lot of work. He probably drove his ex crazy, if she resorted to a karate master when she left him. 

“Want me to keep talking until you fall asleep?” Mike asks.

Jay snorts.

Though he does kind of want that. 

“I need to charge my phone, actually,” Jay says. He makes himself sit up, yawning. 

“Okay,” Mike says. “Sleep tight.”

“Thanks, you too.”

“I’ll call you first thing in the morning.”

“You--” Jay says, startled fully awake by that.

Mike laughs. “I’m fucking kidding, you dork.” 

“Oh. I-- I know, I was--”

“Goodnight, twerp. I’ll be around if you need me.”

Mike hangs up first, which is annoying. Jay stares down at the phone, not sure what just happened, or why he doesn’t feel more betrayed by his own bad instincts. Though if it’s somehow true, and Mike will be around when Jay needs him, maybe they aren’t that bad. 

Of course, that’s just hypothetical. A night spent talking on the phone to each other and a couple of excellent fucks doesn't mean Jay knows this person. He knows where Mike works, sure, and knows pretty much his whole life story after that conversation. He knows Mike grew up wanting to make movies and really tried at it before declaring himself a failure in the same way Jay did. 

But what does that amount to? None of it means Jay knows that he won’t be crushed when Mike gets bored with him. He heads into the bathroom to wash his face and brush his teeth, wrinkling his nose at how old and tired his reflection looks in the mirror over the sink. Maybe if he’d met Mike when he was younger-- But he didn’t, and there’s nothing he can do about that now except to stay smart and not expect too much.

Although, he thinks, staring at himself in the mirror while he brushes his teeth, considering how he just spent his evening and how he actually does sort of wish Mike would call or at least text him again tomorrow, maybe the ship of staying smart about this has sailed.

*


	5. Chapter 5

Jay is a master of discipline for the remainder of the month. He always answers Mike’s texts, but only because it’s a fun distraction from the monotony of his solitary work days, and he makes himself wait at least five minutes before responding to the initial one, never initiating these exchanges himself. He also answers whenever Mike calls late at night for phone sex and a long chat afterward, but this is also a practical measure, because having a small dose of Mike two or three times a week keeps him from giving in to Mike’s bolder advances, and the long chats are more like free therapy than anything else. Jay always feels better afterward, and has been sleeping well for the first time in years, though sometimes he still wakes up in the middle of the night feeling like something is out of place or missing, like Mike was actually there with him when he fell asleep and now is gone.

Most importantly, he only sees Mike once every two weeks, through appointments scheduled at the club. The anticipation feels like the newest, most intense thrill every time, and Jay still wears the blindfold at the start of their appointments. Mike remains creative, trying something new every time and reliably reducing Jay to a wibbling mess before letting him cling shamelessly in the aftermath. The blindfold stays on only until Mike wants it off. 

On their fifth meeting at the club, he rips it off of Jay’s face as it’s offended him almost as soon as he’s through the door. 

Jay breathes hard through his nose and stares up into Mike’s eyes after this happens, flinching a little when he sees something darker and harder there than what he expected. They have an unspoken rule that they don’t text or call each other for around twenty-four hours before their bi-weekly appointments here, to at least somewhat reestablish the sense of mystery. Their last long late night conversation was only a few days ago, and maybe it was too intense. Jay let himself talk about his dreary childhood, which he should never do. It makes him soppy and stupid, and makes people like Tori and that professor he slept with and maybe Mike think that they know everything about him and that he should just give in and let them fix him. 

Or maybe the look in Mike’s eyes has nothing to do with that and Jay is just feeling insecure about what he said. It’s possible Mike just wants to do some hardcore shit tonight. Jay hopes so, his hands flexing over his knees while he waits to find out. 

“Why do you always wait for me to talk?” Mike asks, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his jeans to deny Jay even the sight of them. They barely fit, his thumbs framing the fly of his jeans and drawing Jay’s gaze to the still mostly soft bulge of his dick. 

“What do you want me to say?” Jay asks. “You want me to be in control here?”

“I don’t think you’d like that.”

“You’re right about that.”

They stare each other down, and Jay’s heart starts slamming. He feels something close to panicked. He’s messing this up, and it’s not some irrational subspace freakout. He’s worried about something bigger than that, which is what he’s been afraid of since he started letting Mike work chinks into his armor from the very start. 

“I’ve been thinking about how hard I work for you,” Mike says. “Maybe you need to do your share for once.”

Jay could bring up times when he has, such as when he sucked Mike’s cock for what felt like twenty fucking minutes, though he supposes Mike was still controlling the pace, holding Jay’s hair to make him wait and just keep it warm in his mouth until Mike would let him move again. Jay’s jaw ached afterward, and it made kissing hurt a little, which he’d fucking loved, especially when Mike shoved his tongue in deep, merciless. 

“I’ll do whatever you want,” Jay says, flushing. Mike knows this, in here. Maybe he’s starting to figure it out away from the club, too, though Jay has been staunch on some of his positions. Mike has stopped asking him to go on a date with him, which is progress. 

“Maybe you’re gonna put on a little show for me, then,” Mike says, and he reaches out to stroke Jay’s cheek in a teasing brush of his fingers that makes Jay shiver. “And at the end, I’ll give you a review and a rating. I know you like those.”

Jay’s face gets hotter. He is obsessed with that kind of thing. He’s thought more than he’d like to admit about somehow getting a hold of his post-appointment survey feedback, though he’s also glad that he can’t. It would ruin the fun, because if he’s honest he likes to pretend he’s the most perfect, obedient sub any of these people have ever fucked. He knows it’s probably true in Mike’s case, though he hadn’t talked about what his sex life with his ex was like when they were younger and in love. Maybe she was better. Jay hates that he’s wondered at all. He wishes Mike had left the blindfold on.

“Okay,” Jay says. “What kind of show do you want?”

“Always asking for direction from me. Why don’t you take some initiative, Jay?”

They’ve stopped trying not to use each other’s real names here. They both get off on it, Mike because Jay says his name like he’s breaking under the weight of how good Mike is making him feel, and Jay because Mike says his name like it’s something that really belongs to Mike, a sharp little weapon he can use to break Jay down even further. 

“I need you to tell me what to do,” Jay says, staring up into Mike’s eyes. 

Mike blinks a few times, maybe surprised. His fingers are resting under Jay’s chin, tilting his head back just a bit.

“Why’s that,” Mike asks. 

“Because, ah. I just want to feel, like. Like I’m yours.”

Jay blinks rapidly, hating that his eyes are burning after saying so. He’s not actually emotional or anything. He just wants this to be hot, and it will only be awkward if Mike leaves everything in his hands. 

Mike’s pupils expand, and he touches Jay’s face here and there for a while, breathing harder and seeming to consider whether or not to entertain this desperate plea for mercy.

“Fine,” Mike says. “I want to see you make yourself come. First with your hand, then with some other things. I’ll pick what those things are. If you put on a good enough show, I’ll fuck you. Do you want me to fuck you?”

“God yes please--”

“I know.” Mike flicks Jay’s nose and grins at the wounded noise he makes. “Go pull the couch out of the wall and get on it, on your knees. I’ll get some things ready.”

I don’t want this, Jay thinks, even as he does as Mike asked. He knows it’s part of the game, and that the delayed gratification will make getting Mike’s cock even better after he’s done as Mike asked him to, but he’s been jerking himself off and using toys on himself all week long, and he wants Mike’s fucking hands on him already. Last time they met here, Mike shoved him to the floor and climbed on top of him right away, and they fucked like frantic teenagers in the backseat of a car, graceless and loud, kissing the whole time. Mike had yanked the blindfold off when Jay started to come on his cock, so he could see his eyes, and by the time they were both finished they still had forty minutes left in the appointment, which they spent stretched out on the couch together, talking until Jay was almost drifting to sleep in Mike’s arms while Mike combed his fingers through Jay’s hair.

Jay wants that again, basically. 

He can see the point of doing it this way, though, and spreads his legs to let Mike watch him touch himself as Mike takes a seat in the wooden chair, placed about three feet away from the lowered couch that Jay is kneeling on. The supplies Mike gathered are on the floor beside the legs of the chair: lube, two narrow butt plugs that look like they probably vibrate, and a shock collar thing with a remote control that Jay hasn’t had anyone use on him in years. Mike also has a bottle of bourbon from the wet bar and a glass with ice cubes in it. He pours some bourbon into the glass while watching Jay stroke himself to full hardness. 

“What do you think about when you jerk off?” Mike asks.

You, Jay thinks, wondering if Mike can see it in his eyes. Your cock and your hands and your fucking voice. 

“Depends,” Jay says.

“The diapers?”

“Oh, fuck you,” Jay says, but he laughs, and he sees Mike start to smile, pleased with himself, before taking a big drink to get that happy look off his face. “You know what I meant, ah. It depends on my mood.”

“I see. And what mood are you in right now?”

“Honestly? Annoyed.” 

“Okay. What do you jerk off to when you’re annoyed?”

Jay huffs. “I dunno. Maybe, uh. Getting what I want.” 

“Which is what.”

Jay shrugs one shoulder. He hates the sound of his own voice under normal circumstances, and it’s even worse when he’s breathless while he touches his dick, letting someone watch. Usually when he does this he has the blindfold on and doesn’t have to see the other person’s face as they watch him, doesn’t have to let them see his eyes. He watches jealously as Mike sips from his glass, wanting to be one of the ice cubes that Mike touches his tongue to. Mike is hard in his jeans, but not fully. He’s annoyed, too, probably.

This is confirmed, more or less, when Mike spits one of the ice cubes in Jay’s direction. It bounces off Jay’s shoulder and lands on the couch cushion beside him. 

“Seriously?” Jay says, not sure if he wants to laugh or tell Mike off, his hand going still on his dick.

“Yes,” Mike says, not breaking character. “You’re boring me.”

“How am I supposed to make jerking off for you exciting, exactly? This was your request.”

Jay’s heart is slamming while he waits for Mike to respond. _You’re boring me_ is what he knew was coming, so why does it hurt so bad, in this stupid context? He should prepare himself to hear it more broadly soon, anyway. These things have a time limit, and Jay isn’t whatever spectacular thing Mike thought he was when they met, just because the sex was good. This is why people shouldn’t be fucking romantics. It’s not real. They’re setting themselves up for disappointment. 

“Jay?” Mike says, and the look on his face is different when Jay meets his eyes again.

“Huh?”

“You, uh. You okay?”

“Of course I am-- What?”

“You acted like you couldn’t hear me, just then.”

“Hear what? What did you say?”

Jay feels cold all over, suddenly, and his erection is flagging. Mike looks concerned and hesitant, too, braced on the edge of the chair as if he’s ready to spring out of it but not sure that he should.

“Are you freaking out?” Mike asks, softly, as if this is a secret to be kept from others in the room.

Jay scoffs. “Because you asked me to jerk off for you and spit ice at me? No, Mike.” 

Mike gets red across his cheeks and frowns, sitting back. He drinks more from the glass.   
  
“If you tell me you liked what we did last time,” Mike says. “We can just do that again.” 

“I liked--”

“But not here,” Mike snaps, cutting him off. “We can do that whenever, wherever you want. And not pay a club a fucking fee to pretend it’s not personal. If we’re here, I’m gonna treat you like shit. ‘Cause that’s what you really want, right? If you didn’t just want that, we wouldn’t need this place.”

Jay recoils and lets go of his dick entirely, wishing he had a pillow or something to pull over it. He doesn’t want to be the only naked one in the room, which has never been an issue for him here before. 

“Don’t tell me what ‘we’ need or don’t,” Jay says. “And don’t fucking-- Waste my time here with picking a real fight. What the fuck’s wrong with you?”

Mike groans and rubs his hand over his face. Then he turns and pitches the glass across the room, at the wall, where it shatters.

“Jesus christ!” Jay shouts, his heart slamming. His dick also throbs, and he’s getting hard again when Mike turns to glower at him and stands from the chair, his hands in fists at his sides. 

“You’re right,” Mike says. “I won’t waste your time. I’ll just use you.” 

Jay swallows and nods once, sinking back against the couch as Mike approaches. They’ll have to pay for the glass. It might have been crystal. The idea that Mike is ready and willing to break things has Jay fully hard again, and his thighs are shaking even before Mike reaches out and puts a hand around his throat, just barely applying pressure with his thumb and forefinger. 

Mike has the same look in his eyes that he did when he walked in and tore the blindfold off as if Jay putting it on was an insult to him. Jay has no idea what his own eyes look like, but he holds Mike’s gaze and tries to show him that he just wants to surrender, so bad. 

“I brought you a shock collar,” Mike says, increasing the pressure on Jay’s throat just a bit.

“I saw it.”

“But you’d rather have my hand on your throat, wouldn’t you.”

“Yes,” Jay says, his voice slightly pinched when Mike squeezes him there. 

“Yeah, none of this plastic or leather shit hidden in the walls is what you’re after, is it? Not even the metal stuff. I’m the thing you want to use like a sex toy, right?”

“Uh-huh,” Jay says, staring up at him, unblinking. He has to swallow before he can speak again. “Fuck me like you’re mad about it,” he says, as steadily as he can with Mike’s hand gripping his throat. 

Mike slides his hand to the back of Jay’s neck and pulls his cock out of his jeans. He’s only half hard, and Jay moans and strains forward with his mouth, wanting to feel him plump up fully between his lips. 

“No,” Mike says, grabbing a handful of Jay’s hair with his other hand and holding him back, keeping him in place. “No, I’m using you, too, remember?”

“Please,” Jay says, licking his lips and staring at Mike’s cock, then up into his face. “I want to feel you get hard in my mouth, please?”

Mike snorts but presses forward, shoving himself in between Jay’s lips.

Jay’s eyes slide shut, and his skin starts tingling all over as he laps at Mike’s cock, feeling it thickening up on his tongue, the texture making him wiggle in place on the couch. All his anxiety gets flicked away by this, and the relief of feeling it lift from shoulders makes him sag in Mike’s grip, letting Mike drag him forward and push him back as his cock fills out fast on Jay’s tongue. Jay liked the partially soft feeling but loves this even more, his lips straining around Mike’s full thickness. 

“Spoiled little bitch,” Mike says, under his breath, like he almost doesn’t want Jay to hear. “Look at you, getting what you want. Always getting what you want from me, ‘cause all you want’s that cock, huh?”

Jay moans and tries to take Mike deeper. He can’t move in any way except how Mike lets him, and he swallows around the head of Mike’s dick when it stabs back toward his throat, making him cough. 

Mike fucks his mouth for a long time. Jay drifts away from any sort of decision making or worry or wondering what comes next. He’s pliant in Mike’s hands when Mike pulls out with a grunt, and he vaguely expects Mike to jack himself just a few times and come on his face, but apparently Mike isn’t that close. He flips Jay onto his knees and has him grab the back of the couch before going for the lube. 

“Should fuck you dry,” Mike says, sounding like his teeth are grit. “You’d like it.” 

“Mike,” Jay says, arching his back and pressing his ass out. It’s not an objection. 

Mike smacks his ass hard, then pushes his shoulders down and spanks his balls, just hard enough to knock a pitiful sound of surprise out of Jay before he bites down on the back couch cushion to keep himself quiet. Jay is breathing raggedly, feeling like he’s been yanked into three or four pieces of himself, all of them fully in Mike’s hands. 

“Surprised you only ever do this with one person at a time,” Mike says, either because it’s on Jay’s profile or because they’ve discussed it during their phone chats. Jay can’t remember right now, can’t think, doesn’t want to. Mike smacks his ass again, and Jay gasps when he feels the shock collar sliding around his throat. “Seems like you need more than one big cock to satisfy you. Can’t see why you wouldn’t let yourself just get passed around.” 

Jay has no interest in responding to Mike’s taunts at this point. He just breathes against the couch cushion and waits for Mike to either hit him again, jar him with a shock from the collar, or shove in hard. He hears himself whining when it takes too long for anything at all to happen, the cold air in the room seeming to slide cruelly across his back. 

“Does this thing hurt?” Mike asks, muttering. 

He’s asking like he expects Jay to answer. Jay assumes he’s talking about the shock collar. It’s not really painful, more about being caught off guard than anything. He shakes his head against the cushion and looks back over his shoulder at Mike, pleading with his eyes for something, anything. 

“Your hair,” Mike says, almost looking like he’s going to cry. Jay lifts a shaking hand to his head to see what he’s talking about. His hair is disordered, of course, all fucked up from Mike using it as a hand hold while he fucked Jay’s face. 

Mike slicks his cock with one hand and shoves Jay down roughly with the other, so his face is hidden against the back of the couch. Jay is all too glad for this arrangement, spreading his knees and arching his back, asking for it. Mike’s big hand is pressing down between Jay’s shoulder blades, making him ache in the best way. He needs more, wants to be split open around Mike’s dick while he’s held down by him. It’s the simplest shit, stuff that would normally bore him. Maybe it’s just the size of Mike’s cock. 

Jay gasps when he feels Mike pushing into him without pause, and he whimpers softly when Mike leans over him, settling onto Jay’s back.

Mike has taken off his shirt, finally, and Jay groans for how good Mike’s bare chest feels against his back. Mike is sweaty and hairy and way too hot. It’s perfect, almost enough to make Jay sob with relief. One more greedy roll of Jay’s hips has Mike pressed all the way into him, and they both moan for finally having this feeling back. Mike tucks one arm across Jay’s chest, his other hand resting over the back of Jay’s head and holding him down. Jay can’t stop moving his hips, but Mike is letting him do it, so it must feel good for him, too. 

Jay just wants to make him feel good. He just wants to give Mike everything, here, like this. He’d agree to anything when Mike is this deep inside him, keeping him full while he's closed all around him. 

“Fuck,” Mike says, his mouth hot against the back of Jay’s ear. “I know you needed that, you fucking-- I can feel it, you can’t hide from me. I’m inside you, Jay.”

“Yeah,” Jay says, trying to nod under the weight of Mike’s hand. “Yeah, Mike, please--”

“Fuck your ‘please,’ you got what you wanted. I was gonna torture you.” Mike bites at Jay’s throat, just over the shock collar. Jay thinks he may have forgotten to bring the remote control for the collar over to the couch, which is actually pretty funny. “But, just. The only way to really drive you crazy is to not give you this dick, and that’s all I want to fucking do, all night long, gonna fuck you so hard--”

And then he’s doing it, grabbing Jay’s hair again and pulling his head back, making him arch into it obscenely as he shouts in wet-mouthed pleasure. Jay just takes it, everything in him spinning toward orgasm already. He tries to fuck the couch cushion in front of him to put himself over the edge, but Mike holds him just so, far back enough to keep his dick from finding any friction. Mike slips a pinky finger under the collar and groans when the pressure on Jay’s throat makes his ass clench up hard around the inward slam of Mike’s cock. 

“Think I’m always gonna be here to take care of this bitch ass when it goes into heat?” Mike asks, his teeth grazing Jay’s ear. He’s been saying other things, maybe, and Jay has been crying out in wordless approval, but this is the first thing that really registers through Jay’s haze of being so close to coming but not quite there, held just out of reach by Mike’s will. 

“Mike,” Jay says when Mike licks around the top of the collar, slowing his thrusts, maybe because he’s close, too. “Miiike, Mike--”

“Yeah, scream it. I could walk you down the hall like this, couldn’t I? Steer you around like a little wheelbarrow on my dick. You’d just let me, you’d just take it, I could do you so dirty when you’re like this. God, and that’s what you fucking want. You, ah, you wah-- Want someone to just-- Ruin you, finally.” 

Jay jams himself back on Mike’s dick with a ragged cry and starts to come as soon as he finds that good spot, shaking apart in Mike’s grip while he unloads. Mike isn’t wrong. But Jay can’t stop shaking his head, even after he's emptied his cock and is just making little crying sounds while Mike keeps pounding him. 

Ruin me, Jay thinks, sniffling and hiccuping and letting Mike use him while he drifts. Take it all, tear it up, throw it away.

Mike comes deep inside him with a growl that he presses to Jay’s ear, falling forward against him again and crushing him to the back of the couch. Jay feels tiny underneath him, and like his muscles have evaporated into airy bliss. He’s making soft noises that come from someplace deep inside him that Mike’s dick is still occupying, listening to Mike’s crazed breathing start to slow while Mike nuzzles his neck and bites at the collar, gnawing on it like he wants to snap it off with his teeth. Jay wouldn’t be surprised if he did. Mike can wreck the whole room if he wants to. Jay will pay for it. It would be worth it to sit at the center of the damage and know there’s nothing left to break. 

“Are you disappointed?” Mike asks, still inside Jay and slumped against him. 

“Wha,” Jay says. He feels like it must be a trick question, or just more dirty talk, though Mike usually drops it after he comes. “What?”

“I didn’t turn it on.” Mike touches the collar, tugging it so that Jay coughs a little. Then he takes it off and tosses it across the couch so hard that it slips off onto the floor with a heavy clatter. 

“Oh-- Oh, no, I don’t care.” 

Jay rubs at his face with his hand and pushes his hips back a little, ready to clean up and stretch out on the couch with Mike, if not exactly ready to talk yet. Mike usually lets him stay quiet until he’s recovered a little, and unlike on the phone he always seems okay when Jay just listens and doesn’t say much, letting himself enjoy the low rumble of Mike’s voice against his cheek while he rests his head on Mike’s chest. 

“Well,” Mike says, and then nothing more. 

He pulls out of Jay a little hastily, drawing a whine from him. Jay is used to his insane thickness now and it doesn’t really burn anymore, even when Mike first pushes in, just feels good. Maybe Jay just knows how to relax for it now. The thought makes him shiver with a pulse of renewed arousal as he drops down onto the couch with his eyes closed and waits for Mike to return with a cloth to wipe him down as usual. 

“Watch out for the broken glass,” Jay says, remembering it with a jerk and lifting his head to blink groggily at Mike.

But Mike isn’t crossing the room to the wet bar with the clean-up supplies. He’s seated in the chair, still breathing hard, naked and watching Jay, his hands on his thighs. 

“Oh,” Jay says, shrinking. His head sinks back down, his cheek resting on the couch again. “You okay?”

“I don’t know,” Mike says. “I think you’re kinda breaking my heart.” 

Jay just stares at him. It has to be some kind of joke, right? It’s nowhere near something Jay can deal with in his present state, regardless. 

“Sorry,” Jay says, barely audible, his fist curled over his mouth. 

“I don’t think you are.”

Mike stands with a groan and successfully avoids the broken glass on his way to the bar. He wets a cloth and returns to wipe Jay down, doing it less gently than usual. It usually seems like something he’s enjoying and indulging in, but this time it’s more perfunctory, reminding Jay of doms he’s been with here who clearly resent that they’re expected to treat him like a person when they’re done with him. 

“I’m sorry,” Jay says again, his face buried against the couch.

“For what.”

“I-- I don’t know.” 

Jay’s shoulders jump. He’s not crying, more like cringing. He doesn’t want to be-- But he’s not going to change for Mike, or anyone-- 

“You’re okay,” Mike says, gentle, the way Jay needs. Jay shivers when Mike strokes his back. He’s not going to leave, maybe. Jay was sure for a second that he would. He relaxes against the couch little by little, more for every brush of Mike’s fingers over his skin. “I watched that movie you told me about,” Mike says. “With the witches who are models or whatever.”

“Oh,” Jay says. He’s still gone enough that it takes him a second to remember the name. “ _Neon Demon_. Did you, um. Like it?”

“Not really. Sorta? I started to like it. It was kinda hypnotic, I see what you mean. But then also so cold. And obvious.” 

“Hm.” Jay is in Mike’s sway enough that it hurts his feelings a little to hear this. “I see. Didn’t you like the motel scenes, at least? And the photoshoot?”

“Sure, yeah. I mean, I get it. But there’s something missing. Some kind of heart.”

“If that movie had more heart it wouldn’t have hit right. It’s not supposed to feel emotionally brutal, like it would if you really knew and loved the main girl. She’s beautiful but remote for a reason. It lets you to enjoy the details of the aesthetic rather than getting like, devastated on her behalf.” 

“I guess.”

Jay feels like he said something wrong. He rolls onto his side, putting his back against the couch cushions and staring up at Mike. 

“Are you going to-- ?” Jay asks, rubbing the spot on the couch beside him and blushing rather than saying it out loud.

Mike sighs. “We have like forty more minutes,” he says. “Again.” 

“I could come again, um. After a minute.”

Mike stretches out on his back rather than rolling toward Jay and sheltering him against the back of the couch like he has before. He stares up at the ceiling and lets Jay cling to his arm and rest his chin on Mike’s shoulder. 

“I just wish I was at home,” Mike says after a while, his jaw tight.

Jay closes his eyes tight against Mike’s skin and loosens his grip on his arm, hurt. 

“I’d make you wear one of my sweatshirts,” Mike says. “You’re always shivering, here. Can’t we customize the temperature in these rooms?”

Jay pinches his eyes shut even tighter. He feels them start to burn at the corners, but he’s not actually going to cry. That only ever happens during sex, and rarely even then.

“I like it like this,” he manages to say. 

“I know you do. What am I talking about, you’d hate my place. I just think about dressing you in my clothes, like. How they’d hang off your shoulders and over your hands. And when we’re on the phone at night I think about you in bed next to me. Shit. I know you don’t want to hear this, and I told myself I wouldn’t say it--”

“I--”

“I just don’t think I can do this much longer, man. It’s your thing, that’s fine. It’s not for me.”

Jay makes himself sit up. He feels like his limbs are made of sharp things, like no matter what he does with them he’ll cut himself open in the process of detaching from Mike and climbing over him. 

Mike stares at the ceiling for a while before glancing over at Jay, sad-eyed. He’s always sad-eyed, unless he’s laughing at Jay’s jokes, and most of the time that happens over the phone, so Jay doesn’t get to see it.

“I understand,” Jay says. 

Mike swallows and looks at the ceiling again. He has his hands resting over his belly. His cock is soft now but still kind of pink from being inside Jay, flushed from recent use. 

“So,” Mike says. “I’ll be around, if. If you need a VCR worked on. We do DVD players, too. And cabinet installation. Or if you just want to get fucked, out there in the real world. But I don’t want to be alone anymore. This just feels like being alone with someone who’s also alone.” 

Mike sits up with a grunt and starts dressing without looking at Jay. The room feels ice cold. Jay stares at the broken glass near the wet bar. 

“I’ll pay for that,” Mike says when he sees what Jay is looking at. 

“I know.”

“Sorry, I just--” Mike pauses there until Jay looks in his direction, though not up at his face. He stares at Mike’s legs, feeling like the last of him is running down a drain at the center of the room, into some dark place that exists far beneath this club. “I just want a boyfriend, you’re right,” Mike says. “And it’s already gonna take me long enough to get over wanting it to be you, so. I’d better go, since it’s not what you want.” 

Jay can’t even look Mike in the eyes, because if he does he’ll-- And Jay is not that guy, he’s just in that space, where he wants to give in and say yes, oh, please, whatever you want, I’m all yours. It’s a sex thing and he’s coming down from it and it’s unfair, again, for Mike to put Jay on the spot while he works his way back toward his actual self, who would hate this. 

“Okay,” Mike says, and he leaves.

Jay dresses in a kind of trance. Possibly it takes him the full remaining thirty-five minutes that he has in the room to make his way to the wall panel and put on his robe and slippers. He does make it out before the chimes sound, and spends a long time in the shower in the locker room, such that several people who have no qualms with crossing paths with other clients have arrived by the time he dresses. 

The first thing he wants when he’s alone in the backseat of his Uber is to text Mike. He’s not even sure what he wants to say. Something clinical in agreement: yes, they took this too far. Or something pathetic wherein he’d backtrack and say maybe he could try to be different, to not let Mike down in the real world, outside of this weird dream they had together. 

He doesn’t send anything, and when he gets home he deletes the survey email in his inbox, as he has with all the previous ones generated after repeat appointments with Mike. He strips off his pants and gets into bed without brushing his teeth, pulls the blankets over his head. In the morning, he’ll have the comfort of knowing he did the right thing even when his head was turned around by sex. So he’s just got to make it to the morning. 

*

He expects Mike to text him within a few days, and it hurts when he doesn’t. Jay knows what he has to do, if he wants Mike back. He knows it would be simple for a normal person, to just finally be the one who reaches out. Even if he agreed to a date and the whole thing later blew up in his face, so what? 

But he can’t make himself do it. He’s too afraid he has more to lose than Mike if something goes wrong, and he can’t feel that way again. He’s designed his whole life around avoiding that feeling.

After two weeks of no contact from Mike and no sex at the club, Jay feels like all he has left in his life is work, so when Jack has to back out of a shoot at the very last minute because his kid broke an arm during a soccer game, Jay feels close to losing it completely while he’s still on the phone with Jack, still trying to process this disastrous news.

“I just--” Jay says, knowing he shouldn’t but unable to stop himself: “I guess I don’t understand why Olivia can’t stay with him until you’re done with the job.” 

“Have you ever broken an arm?” Jack asks, after a stretch of silence that can’t mean anything good. “The kid’s upset, Jay--”

“I understand that! Of course! But, he’s-- Getting treatment, and your wife is there with him, and I’m fucking screwed on a maybe lawsuit-bringing level if I don’t do this job right--” 

“Call Tori!” Jack says. “I don’t know what to tell you, my kid needs me.”

“Of course he does, but just for three hours, during the ceremony, please--” 

“No, Jay! I can’t!”

“I just don’t understand why Olivia can’t handle it while you’re--”

“Because he needs his father, too!” Jack says, finally raising his voice, and then he hangs up. 

Jay stands for a while, frozen in his kitchen, already dressed in his button-down and nice slacks for the shoot, the phone still pressed to his ear while Jack’s words echo through his skull like a condemnation. Jack won’t have heard it this way, but Jay feels it down to his heels: _he needs both his parents to show him they care or he’ll be fucked up for life, like you_. 

He calls Tori before he can think about that more and start to fall apart on a truly unprofessional level prior to this shoot, which is huge and involved and won’t work at all without a second camera operator. 

“I can’t,” she says. He can hear that she’s out somewhere, among a crowd. “I’m at Dave’s archery thing.”

“I don’t-- Don’t know how important that is, but Tori, please, I’m begging, I’ll pay you double, this is going to ruin me if I don’t--”

“Oh god, don’t be so dramatic. Everything’s going to ruin you, in your opinion.”

“I’m fucking serious, please! I need you, this is, it’s just three hours--”

“Stop treating me like I’m still your pushover college girlfriend,” she says, lowering her voice in a way that only makes her sound angrier. “You barely even wanted to be with me back then, and you can’t just conveniently act like we’re some kind of dynamic duo for better or worse when it suits your business interests. Dave wants me here, so I’m here. Pull yourself the fuck together and figure it out on your own. You always do.”

She hangs up. Again, it takes Jay a while to remove the phone from his ear. When he has, he sinks down his knees, letting this batter him alongside what Jack said. He doesn’t have a partner. He doesn’t have anybody who even halfway gives a shit, except whichever client is paying him to fade into the background and work for their money. 

He disassociates for about five minutes before the ding of a calendar reminder on his phone jars him to his feet, if not out of his pitched-down-a-well mindset. The reminder tells him he needs to leave for the ceremony venue so he’ll have enough time to set up the stationary cameras. 

He paces for a few minutes, chewing his lip and feeling sweat gathering under his arms. It makes no sense that he’s afraid to reach out to the only other person who comes to mind, because they’re the one who might deliver the death blow that sends him crumbling to the ground in a full nervous breakdown. That shouldn’t be the case. None of this should be happening. 

His hand is shaking when he types a text to Mike. He sends it, not really expecting a response.

_Are you free? I need help_

Mike responds thirteen seconds later. 

_yeah I’m free, what do you need?_

Jay calls him to explain, barely hearing what’s coming out of his mouth. Mike must hear how shaken up he is, because he doesn’t ask for details or make any smart ass remarks, just says he can pick Jay up now and they can talk about compensation later. 

Mike pulls up to Jay’s building in an old Acura with a sun-damaged fake leather interior. He parks and leaps out to help Jay load all his equipment into the backseat. 

“Thank you,” Jay keeps saying, ducking Mike’s gaze as they hurry to get it all loaded. “Thank you, I really, just, thank you--”

“No problem,” Mike says. “I like weddings.” 

Jay doesn’t say much on the drive there. He feels like his chest is going to shatter and like if he looks at Mike full on he’ll start wibbling in pathetic gratitude and will be useless for the entire shoot, rendering his emergency recruitment of Mike as a camera operator pointless. Mike talks about mundane stuff related to the repair shop and the NFL draft, and Jay nods, half-listening, comforted by the sound of Mike’s voice and by the way he drives with just one hand on the wheel, steering the dumpy old car with such confidence that Jay feels just slightly turned on by the time they arrive, despite his flayed nerves.

Mike is better at taking direction than Jay expected, and seems completely comfortable behind the camera. When they’ve got the basics set up at the church, Jay finally looks up into Mike’s eyes. 

“I just got a text, the bride and her entourage are on their way,” Jay says, trying not to let the way Mike is looking at him affect him too deeply just now. There’s sympathy in Mike’s eyes, and relief, and some low-burning hunger, too. Jay knows he looks good in this outfit. Mike is wearing a long-sleeved button-down, too, per Jay’s request, and a pair of gray pants that look like wool, possibly the only nice ones he owns and way too hot for this weather. His cheeks are flushed. He looks handsome, sweet, and he smells so good that Jay wants to drop to his knees and hump Mike’s leg, but that’s not an option right now. “Um, can you handle things out here?” he asks, blinking rapidly and trying to refocus.

“Sure,” Mike says. “Sorry I didn’t wear a tie, I didn’t think--”

“Are you kidding me?” Jay stands on his tiptoes and kisses Mike’s jaw without thinking, wanting to rub his face against the slight stubble that he can feel more than see. “You’re saving my life here,” he says, by way of explanation, then dashes away. 

Jay goes into work mode as soon as he’s face to face with the bride and her exacting, scary mother, and it’s a massive relief to focus on anything but his personal life and those two phone calls that almost sent him spiraling before the text from Mike saved him. He keeps in touch with Mike via text during the shoot, giving him instructions when they’re not working side by side. Somewhere way up in this text chain is a picture of Mike’s cock, followed by a picture of Jay’s. The picture of Mike’s is also saved on Jay’s phone. It didn’t even occur to him to delete it, and he’s beat off to it twice since Mike told him at the club that it was over. He lets himself think about all this for about thirty seconds between the ceremony and reception, then gets back to work. 

Mike is a helpful assistant, unquestioning and hard-working. The quality of his camerawork remains to be seen, but it seems fine from what Jay can tell while it’s in progress. Having him there, so suddenly and fully present in Jay’s real life, is disorienting at moments, but mostly it’s a comfort. Every time Jay scans the massive reception space and sees Mike among the crowd, his heart kicks with a combination of alarm and relief. Then the feeling starts to mellow into something more widespread and long-lasting, and he makes himself think about something else, until finally the bride and groom have left and the last guests are trickling out. When the scary mother of the bride has departed with the gifts and it’s just hotel staff stacking chairs and bringing out vacuums, Jay is left alone with Mike at last, packing up his stuff while Mike comments on the wedding band. 

“I need to sit down for a minute,” Jay says when his equipment is all packed up, Mike carrying half of it. 

“Okay,” Mike says. “Where?”

“This place has a really nice pool. Have you ever seen it?”

“Do I look like I can afford this hotel?” 

Jay tips his head in the direction he wants Mike to follow. He’s done countless shoots here, since it’s the nicest hotel in Milwaukee. It’s got nothing on the fancy ones in Chicago or New York where he's traveled for out of town shoots, but the indoor pool area is one of his favorite interiors in the city. It’s landscaped to look like a Polyneisan lagoon in an upscale way, striking a balance between tropical-themed and classy with lots of encircling plant life. It’s almost midnight and the pool itself is closed, but Jay knows how to sneak onto the posh pool deck by going through a back hallway that the catering staff uses to stock the poolside bar. 

“I know every hotel in Milwaukee like the back of my hand,” he says when Mike boggles at him as they make their way down the empty catering hallway and through the door that leads to the pool deck, which Jay has never found to be locked. “I guess that’s a depressing thing to admit,” he says, setting his camera bag near a cushioned lounger in a shady area near the hot tub. 

Jay drops onto the lounger with a groan, his back killing him as usual after a full day of shooting. He’s expecting Mike to sit on a nearby lounger or maybe wander around and check out the pool area, which looks even cooler when the lights are dimmed like this, the water glowing an almost neon blue. Mike puts the bags he carried down beside the others and sits right next to Jay, on the same lounger, close enough that Jay can smell his sweat.

“It’s not depressing,” Mike says, shouldering him. “You okay?”

“Of course I’m okay, I’m just tired, and tired of people flaking on me. I need to find a new camera operator, and--” Jay looks over at Mike, loosening his tie. “You look like you’re burning up in that outfit,” he says. 

“Is that your way of saying I look hot?” Mike smirks at Jay’s expression and undoes a few buttons at the top of his shirt. “But, yeah. I’m kinda sweating like a pig. Sorry. Hopefully nobody noticed.”

“They can suck my cock if they have a problem with it,” Jay says, and he grins at the shocked look Mike gives him. “Just,” Jay says, his voice shaking a little, suddenly. “I had a, um. A really shitty day, is all. Until you showed up for me, so. Thank you.” 

“C’mere, green eyes,” Mike says, tucking his arm around Jay’s back like it’s not just his right but his responsibility to do so.

Jay has no objection to either concept at present. He leans onto Mike and scoots even closer, hiding his face against the side of Mike’s neck, where the smell of him is so good it’s almost overwhelming. Mike’s skin is almost but not quite damp, just over his shirt collar, a kind of musky humidity emanating from him and making Jay’s mouth wet. He closes his eyes and slides his arm across Mike’s chest, so worn down that he feels like he could fall asleep here, with tinkly spa music from the hotel lobby just faintly audible in the distance and Mike’s arm sturdy and warm around his back. 

“I miss you,” Jay mutters after they’ve been like that for a while. He knows he shouldn’t do this now, when he feels so broken and needy that he’d agree to anything to keep from being alone, but Mike has been waiting patiently for him to finally speak, holding him and letting him take his time, and he probably knew Jay was thinking it anyway. 

“Yeah,” Mike says, rubbing Jay’s side. “I haven’t been sleeping too great.”

“Me either. Talking on the phone till I couldn’t hold my eyes open anymore helped.”

“Mhm-hmm. Have you been back to the club?”

“No. Have you?”

“God no. I could never really afford that place, anyway.”

Jay lifts his head and stares into Mike’s eyes. He feels shaky, in his muscles and in some deeper way, too, like his bones are trembling. 

“I thought of how you could compensate me for this last minute job,” Mike says.

Jay snorts and hooks his fingers in Mike’s shirt, where he’s unbuttoned it a little in front.

“Is it sexual in nature?” Jay asks, mumbling this sheepishly, as if he’s not more than willing to give himself to Mike that way for free.

“Not necessarily,” Mike says.

Jay looks up at him again, eyebrows raised. 

“A date,” Mike says. “One date. If you hate it, you’ll never have to see me again.” 

“I haven’t been on a date in like twenty years,” Jay says.

“Why the hell not? Because college fucked you up?”

“College,” Jay mutters, but he knows what Mike means, because Jay told him all about it during those late night phone calls: failing to make it work with Tori and thereafter failing at all their in-progress film projects, letting that professor who fucked him treat him like a dumb slut and liking it until he didn’t, then deciding he was done with love and sex and romance and doubling down on it over the next two decades. “Yeah,” he says. “I guess.”

“I get it,” Mike says, squeezing him. “I got married young. I knew it was over years before we broke up. But I didn’t know how to date anymore, or how to even be with someone who wasn’t her, so I clung to it. This shit’s scary. And I’m awful at it, as you’ve seen. But. When you texted me today, when you said you needed help? I could have been two steps away from the pot of gold at the end of a fucking rainbow and I still would have turned on my heel to run to you.”

“Why?” Jay asks. He’s staring down at Mike’s chest, his fingers curled into the front of Mike’s shirt.

“Because I think I was supposed to meet you back then,” Mike says. “Not her. And I would have protected you, from. All that shit, if I’d been there.”

Jay sniffs at the idea of ‘supposed to,’ and of letting someone protect him back then. Tori was horrified when she found out he was getting fucked by someone twice his age who was also pretty mean, also married. Jay told her to stay out of it. He knew she was right, that he was in over his head and that it was going to pile drive him straight through the earth when it all blew up in his face. But he let it happen, because nobody was going to tell him he couldn’t handle destroying himself. 

“I just want to go home and get out of these clothes,” Jay says. He looks up into Mike’s eyes and sees disappointment there. “Maybe we could go to your place,” he says. “And I could put on your clothes. Like you said. If you still want me to.”

Mike nods and kisses him, exhaling into Jay’s mouth like he’s been holding his breath from the moment he pulled up to Jay’s apartment building, hoping all day that this was where things were headed. Jay puts his arms around Mike’s neck and kisses back, clinging. Mike feels so warm under his shirt. Jay just wants to strip off every layer and curl up against the heat of him for days. 

Jay is somewhere between comfortably drifting toward sleep and keyed up enough to feel like a live wire when he’s seated in the passenger seat of Mike’s car, all his equipment packed into the backseat. It’s a combination of feelings that he isn’t sure anyone but Mike has ever been able to affect in him, this kind of cozy surrender that also sets him on edge in a way that gets his dick stirring in his pants, because he never knows what will happen next. They seem to always be turning some new corner together, and now Mike’s car is leaving the city entirely, headed for the suburbs on the highway, which fills Jay with a new kind of trepidation. Mike has the radio on and they’re not talking much, both tired. Jay isn’t even sure they’re going to fuck when they get to Mike’s place. He isn’t sure at all what’s happening, just that he doesn’t want to leave Mike’s side yet.

“I haven’t exactly cleaned up for company,” Mike says when he’s pulling into the driveway of a townhouse crowded among others that look exactly like it. “So you can’t judge too hard, okay?”

“I’m just glad you have a garage,” Jay says, for the sake of his equipment, as Mike pulls the car into it.

They’re either in St. Francis or Cudahy. Jay isn’t sure where the line is. He’s never lived in the suburbs since leaving the farm town where he grew up. Even when he had to share a shitty attic apartment with two other guys after dropping out of college, he was still technically in the city. 

Mike’s garage has the distinct smell of an old shed at Jay’s grandparents’ house, something like cut grass and motor oil, also just general clutter. Jay can tell even before they walk through the door that leads into Mike’s kitchen that the rest of his place will be like this, too: disorganized in a practical way, tools left out on the counters and sweatshirts hanging over the backs of chairs. It’s dark inside, but Jay can see empty beer bottles on the kitchen table and bowls on the floor with half-eaten pet food.

“I hope you’re not allergic to cats,” Mike says, turning to Jay at the bottom of a narrow, carpeted staircase that leads up to the townhome’s second floor.

“Nope,” Jay says, trying not to notice the artwork on the walls that needs dusting. There’s no way this is Mike’s taste, not a chance that he hung framed landscape prints and Japanese fans on the wall. “This is where you lived with your ex?” Jay asks, staring at the fans and trying not to freak out about the fact that he feels doubly like he’s been enticed into someone else’s lair: Mike’s, and the ex’s, too, or maybe it’s more the ghost of Mike’s marriage that’s choking the air in here, making Jay loosen his tie until he's pulling it off entirely. 

“How’d you guess,” Mike says, and he tries to grin but looks a little queasy, too. “You want a drink?”

“Yes, please.”

Mike goes to the fridge for some beers. The interior of the fridge is as Jay expected, claustrophobic levels of cluttered, possibly with things that should have been thrown out years ago but just live there now, like old jars of olives shoved to the back. Jay tells himself to stop being a dick and accepts a beer after Mike has popped its cap off with a magnetized bottle opener he keeps on the front door of the fridge, which is old-fashioned and white, with the freezer door on top. Jay toasts his bottle against Mike’s when Mike holds it up. 

“Here’s to, uh. Well. We spent the whole day together.” 

“Yep,” Jay says, and he drinks.

“I was gonna say, without me turning into a pumpkin,” Mike says, worrying his beer between his hands. “But maybe I just did. I know this place sucks--”

“Oh my god,” Jay says. “I don’t care. I grew up poor.”

Mike snorts and frowns a little before taking a slug from his beer.

“I’m not poor,” he says. “I just. Have been meaning to move out of here, but I was depressed--”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Jay says, too sharply. “I just meant. I’m not a snob.”

“Uh-huh. What do you want to-- Do you want me to just take you up to bed or what?”

Jay rolls his eyes and drinks more. His face is hot. He does want that, yes, but he doesn’t want to ask for it.

“Where are your cats?” Jay asks. 

“Is that going to inform your response to whether or not I should take you to bed?”

“Stop being weird!”

“I’m not-- Okay, sorry.” Mike groans and chugs from his beer. “I’m way out of practice,” he says, still a little breathless from drinking. “I thought maybe the fucked-up way that club works would help, and maybe it did. I’m possibly worse at this without that place.”

“The club isn’t fucked up,” Jay says, examining the other things on Mike’s fridge in the low light through the sliding glass doors that look out on a small, fenced backyard. There’s a 2015 Packers football schedule magnet, and a cartoon shark with its pointy teeth open around the words SEND MORE TOURISTS, THE LAST ONES WERE DELICIOUS! DAYTONA BEACH FLORIDA. Jay wonders if Mike went there with his ex. This place feels like a museum to a dead relationship. 

“Fine,” Mike says. “The club isn’t fucked up, if that’s what you’re looking for. I had fun there, with you. But I’m done with it now. Are you, uh. I guess you’re going to keep going there?”

“I have no idea what I’m going to do, Mike.”

Mike thunks his beer down on the kitchen table and grabs Jay by the shoulders, as if hearing his name has broken some spell. He stares down into Jay’s face and touches his hair, sweeping it back.

“Still want to get out of those clothes?” Mike asks, eyes dark. 

“Uh-huh.” Jay gulps down most of the remainder of his beer while holding Mike’s gaze and puts the bottle on the counter behind him. “Please,” he adds, as if what he needs from Mike isn’t clear enough, now.

Mike takes him upstairs by the hand. The air on the second floor is less stuffy, and the bedroom feels more lived in, less frozen in time. Mike leaves the light on in the hall and the door open, and doesn’t put any lights on inside. The blinds are half-open, letting in enough moonlight and street lamp glow to illuminate Mike's big, unmade bed, which has a heavy-looking and ornately carved wooden headboard that looks like something either he or his ex inherited from their grandmother. The comforter that’s bunched at the end of the bed has flowers and birds on it, and there’s a huge flat screen TV mounted on the wall across from the bed.

Jay takes in the details with growing fondness while Mike yanks his clothes off. The room is cave-like, a sanctuary where Mike licked his wounds for years after his ex left him. Mike has talked about it, presumably while lying in this bed, on the phone with Jay. There’s one thing about Jay’s romantic history that he hasn’t told Mike, a thing he never even told Tori. He’s saving it for when Mike needs to hear it most, or maybe for when he feels like he can say it without evaporating. 

“Roll over,” Mike says when Jay is naked underneath him on the bed. Mike has stripped off everything but his boxers, and his hands feel perfect on Jay’s hips when he flips Jay over impatiently, onto his belly. “Scoot up,” Mike says, pushing Jay toward the center of the bed. Jay moans for the smell of Mike on the bedsheets and for the way his cock drags across them as he lets Mike shift him into position. 

“Oh fuck,” Jay says when he feels Mike parting his ass cheeks and breathing hotly between them. Jay hasn’t had this from Mike yet, hasn’t had it from anyone in a long time. “Ah,” he says for the first lick, shivering all over and spreading his knees wider on Mike’s mattress, ready to be shameless for him, spoiled by him. “Oh god, fuck, yes--”

Mike laughs low in his chest and licks Jay again. 

“I had a feeling you’d be loud for this,” he says.

Just the heat of Mike’s breath against his hole while he’s spread out like this makes Jay moan into the sheets and roll his hips back. He feels everything in him dropping toward surrender in a way that he hasn’t experienced outside of the club since college. It's so good, Mike’s hot tongue teasing and pushing into him while his big hands hold Jay's ass cheeks apart so he can take what he wants. Jay chews on the bedsheets and whimpers, rocking himself against the mattress and almost getting himself over the edge just for the thought of leaving his come on Mike’s sheets, making Mike clean up after him not just at the club but here, in his sanctuary. 

Mike flips him over when he’s close. Jay whines, then hisses and presses his chest up greedily when Mike bites and licks at his nipples. 

“Stop that,” Mike says, reaching down to give Jay a little slap on his dick when he tries to hump himself up against Mike’s belly or his thighs, whatever he can get. Jay shouts and hopes for another, pushing his arms up over his head to show Mike he’s surrendering. Mike stares down at him, half-smiling, looking perfect in the light through the window. Jay could almost say something crazy right now, something about being in love or falling in love, as if he knows anything about that. 

He misses the sight of Mike’s face when Mike crawls down his body, kissing and licking at him on the way, then Mike takes Jay’s dick in his mouth and Jay loses his shit, imagining the neighbors in the townhomes that are pushed right up against Mike’s on both sides hearing him shout all the unconsidered filth that’s pouring out of him: _yeah, fuck, suck my dick, ah god, that’s good, like that_. He doesn’t mind, because Mike doesn’t seem to. He doesn’t tell Jay to quiet down, just sucks him till he’s coming, shouting Mike’s name. 

“Gonna brush my teeth,” Mike says, looming over Jay on all fours while Jay is still panting, recovering, the aftershocks zooming from his fingertips to the back of his neck, all over. “Want to kiss you when I fuck you,” Mike explains, his mouth hovering just over Jay’s.

“Yes,” Jay says, and Mike grins. He nudges Jay’s cheek with his nose and then goes to the attached bathroom, flicking on the light. A calico cat bolts out of the bathroom and streaks through the bedroom before fleeing into the hallway. 

Jay laughs and rolls onto his side, feeling like he could sleep. He’s not at all opposed to falling asleep while Mike fucks him. It’s a fantasy he’s had for a long time, actually: trusting someone so much that they could wake him up with their dick, or put him to bed with it.

He’s almost drifting into a thin nap when Mike finishes brushing his teeth and flicks off the bathroom light. The hall light goes out next, so the only illumination comes from the window across from the bed. Jay closes his eyes again and doesn’t try to fight the grin on his face at the feeling of the mattress dipping behind him as Mike climbs back into bed and scoots over to pull Jay into his arms, spooning up behind him. Jay rolls over to peer up into Mike’s face, loose-limbed and happy. 

“You look sleepy,” Mike says, stroking Jay’s hair back. “We could wait until the morning.”

“No,” Jay says, tugging on Mike’s arms as if he’s going to pull Mike’s cock into him this way. He can feel it against his thigh, huge and so hard. “Want you now,” Jay says, speaking into Mike’s mouth as he leans in for a kiss. 

“God,” Mike says after they’ve kissed for a while. He pulls back to give Jay a broken-open look. “What are you doing to me, man? You’re in my bed now?” 

“You just now realized this?”

“No, just.” Mike licks his lips and looks down before meeting Jay’s gaze again. “You’re the first, um. In so long, just. I guess I’m asking you not to fuck me up.” 

Jay sighs. He can’t make any promises. He doesn’t want to fuck Mike up. 

“Come inside me,” Jay says, tugging at Mike’s arms again. “Just-- If you want me, like that, however you want me-- Just take me.”

Mike gets lube from his bedside table and takes his time pushing into Jay, either to tease him or to make himself last. Jay moans, half-hard again and lolling for how good it is to be filled while he’s in this mood, in this bed, feeling like he could float right out of himself forever, and like it would be okay, because Mike would catch his outward-floating self and hold on to all the most important parts until Jay was ready to take them back. He wraps his arms and legs around Mike when he’s all in, and lets Mike nuzzle at his face and kiss him until his lips throb. He lets Mike have everything, at least for now. 

“God, I want to keep you,” Mike says after he’s fucked into Jay in lazy rolls of his hips for a long time, his face buried against Jay’s throat. Jay can feel that he’s close, and tired, that he needs a little push. 

“Mike,” Jay says, pressing his lips to Mike’s ear. He licks Mike there, then bites softly. “Please, I need it harder.”

“You’re soft, baby,” Mike says, lifting his head to murmur this into Jay’s ear like a secret. “You’re not gonna come.” 

“Doesn’t matter, please, just-- Fuck me, fuck me hard, I need it. Need you, wanna feel it--”

Jay doesn’t have to beg any further. Mike sits back with a grunt and grabs Jay’s legs, holding them open wide around him. He lets Jay look up into his face for a few heaving breaths that feel like they belong to both of them, then pulls almost all the way out and fucks in hard, throwing his head back and letting himself get lost in it until he’s coming with a long sigh, his hands tightening hard enough around Jay’s legs to leave marks. 

“Fuck yes,” Jay says, grabbing for Mike as he tumbles down toward Jay’s chest, still pulsing inside him. “Thank, thank you-- _mph_.”

Mike stays in him until he’s soft and slipping out, kissing him like he can’t stop, almost like he’s afraid to stop. Jay is delirious underneath him, half asleep and sated, ready to roll over and rest for days. He doesn’t even get up to wipe himself off, just turns into Mike’s bedsheets and inhales the scent of them while Mike detaches from him and returns to the bathroom to clean up. He brings a washcloth back for Jay and strokes it over the messiest parts of him before spooning up behind him. 

They’re lying horizontally across the big bed, on top of the wrecked bedsheets, their heads pointed toward the bedroom window. Jay thinks it’s best this way, that they sleep here in a new position that belongs to them, like this is somehow important. His mind is turning off fast and he doesn’t care. He’s safe here and sleepy, so nothing else matters.

He dreams about that frat party in college, after Tori and before the professor, the first boy he ever kissed. In the dream, the boy is Mike, which is comforting until it isn’t, because just like in real life, he can’t find Mike again when the party evaporates around them and the lights come back up on reality, and then he’s in class, realizing he has an exam on a subject he hasn’t studied for all semester. 

He wakes up with a jerk of his shoulders and doesn’t know where he is. Mike is still pressed up behind him, which is his first clue, then he remembers everything and feels trapped by his sense of not knowing how to feel about it, also literally trapped under Mike’s heavy arm. It’s late morning, judging by the light through the window, and there’s a cat bread-loafing on the end of the bed near the footboard, big and gray and staring at them. Mike must have rearranged them at some point last night, because their heads are on the same pillow, pointed toward the headboard now. 

Jay is hot. He remembers having a particular kind of bad dream and tries to sit up, huffing and fidgeting until Mike groans and blinks awake, looking like he wants to go back to sleep.

“Hey,” Jay says. He gives Mike a kiss on the nose. “I gotta get moving-- What time is it?” As if Mike knows. “I have a lunch meeting with a new client.”

“Aren’t all your clients new?” Mike asks, mumbling. “That’d be depressing if, uh. You had repeats.”

“It’s happened.” Jay touches Mike’s hair uncertainly and nods to the cat, who is up in a seated position now but still on the bed. “Your friend is here.”

“That’s Willy,” Mike says, without looking. “I guess he feels betrayed. You’re kinda in his spot.”

“Ha,” Jay says, increasingly uncomfortable. Why is it so hot in here, for one? Is Mike too cheap to run his air con? “Anyway, um. I’ll Uber home, you can go back to sleep.”

“No, don’t be dumb.” Mike rolls onto his back with a groan and rubs his hands over his face. “I’ll drive you. All your stuff’s in my car.”

“I can get it out-- It’s fine, Mike, really. Don’t worry about it, I don’t need you to drive me all the way back to the city.” 

“It’s like fifteen minutes--”

“Not with commuter traffic.” 

Jay gets out of bed and goes into the bathroom, sensing Mike’s eyes on him, his heart starting to beat fast. He’s not sure what’s happening, but he definitely wants to leave. He needs a minute to think, or a day, or several days. He longs for the cleanliness of his own place as he winces at the toilet bowl and sink basin in Mike’s bathroom, which aren’t egregious but definitely could use a cleaning. There are hairs everywhere, both human and cat, and the covered litter box in the corner is making him vaguely ill. It doesn’t stink or anything, but it feels too intimate in a gross way, seeing this at all, and being told that Mike normally sleeps with a cat at his side.

Jay runs the water loud and looks under the bathroom sink, though he knows he shouldn’t. Just as he suspected, he can see certain items stuffed into the back: a box of tampons, old bottles of shampoo that he doubts Mike purchased for himself, a half-empty plastic bag of disposable ladies’ razors. Maybe Mike just keeps this stuff on hand in case he has a woman over. Jay closes the cabinet and turns the water off, glancing at himself guiltily in the bathroom mirror. He remembers this feeling from college, being in his professor’s posh house and seeing his wife everywhere, though of course she was never there when Jay was. It’s not the same, obviously, but he feels twenty years old and profoundly stupid again anyway, and wishes he’d brought his phone into the bathroom with him so he could call the Uber without Mike watching. 

Mike is on his back in bed when Jay opens the bathroom door, and Willy the cat is waiting for his turn in the bathroom, looking irritated and slinking in past Jay’s legs as he exits. Jay half shuts the door behind him without thinking about it, as if the cat needs privacy. 

“Thanks again for yesterday,” Jay says as he dresses hurriedly. He digs his phone out of his pants when he’s still shirtless, wanting to curse out loud when he sees the nearest Uber is ten minutes away. Fucking suburbs. He calls for it and puts on his shirt, watching Mike in bed while he buttons it up. “I, um. I owe you one,” Jay says, not sure if he means a date or not. Maybe last night counts. They had beers.

“Yeah,” Mike says, dragging his hands over his face again. “Don’t mention it.”

“Can I borrow your keys to get my stuff out of your car? Or is it unlocked--”

“Jesus,” Mike says, sitting up. “I’ll help you unload it. Are you sure you don’t want me to just drive you back? I don’t mind.” 

“No, it’s-- Don’t you have a shift, uh. At the shop?”

“It’s Sunday. We’re closed.”

“Oh. Right. Yeah, sorry, Sunday is a big day for lunch meetings, in my line of work--”

“I believe you,” Mike says, staring at him like he doesn’t, actually. “You don’t have to convince me.” 

They head downstairs together awkwardly after they’re dressed. The calico cat is on the sofa in Mike’s living room, which is even messier than it looked when they passed by it in the dark last night. The cat lays eyes on Jay and bolts upstairs. 

“You want coffee or something?” Mike asks.

“Thanks, but--” Jay checks his phone. “My ride gets here in four minutes.”

“Oh. Right.”

They go into Mike’s garage, the familiar shed-like smell hitting Jay even harder in the light of day. Mike activates the garage door and cruel sunlight pours in. There’s a carpentry bench Jay didn’t notice last night in the corner, and something about looking at it makes Jay’s heart heavy as Mike helps him pull all his equipment from the backseat. 

“You really saved me yesterday,” Jay says when they’re standing in the open garage door, Jay’s stuff piled at his feet. Mike is wearing basketball shorts and a t-shirt that’s a little too small, with a Star Trek insignia on it. 

“I know,” Mike says, staring down the road and avoiding Jay’s eyes. 

“I’ll call you after my meeting,” Jay says, softly, and Mike finally looks at him. 

“Okay.” Mike flinches toward Jay and then steps back, smiling sadly. “I want to fix your bedhead,” he says. “But the neighbors who still talk to my ex are already gonna tell her they saw a handsome man leaving my house in walk of shame clothes.”

“You care about that, huh?” Jay says, his sense of danger pricking back up again. He’s pretty sure the black SUV that just pulled onto Mike’s street is his Uber.

Mike shrugs and turns to stare at the car, scratching at his elbow as it pulls into his driveway. He seems almost hungover, though he only had that one beer. His eyes are puffy and there’s a sluggishness about him. Jay wonders if he’s going to get back into bed after this. 

“Jay?” the Uber driver says, sticking his head out of the driver's side window. 

“That’s me.” Jay starts gathering his bags, feeling newly guilty when Mike helps him bring everything to the backseat of the Uber. 

“Whoa,” the driver says. He’s a young guy with bad hair and the car smells weird, like some inorganic air freshener nightmare. “You’ve got a lot of stuff.”

“It’s fine,” Mike says, and Jay’s heart swells, though he usually hates it when people try to defend or speak for him. 

Jay climbs in once the equipment is loaded and leaves the door open so he can say goodbye to Mike while this Uber driver listens. Mike is wearing a pair of embarrassing old man slide-on shoes, no socks. Jay smells like Mike’s house, or maybe just like Mike himself, his come and sweat and weird sweetness. Jay wants to kiss him. The Uber driver clears his throat after they’ve both just been staring at each other for a while.

“You guys cool?” the driver asks.

Mike smirks, and Jay has to hold his hand over his mouth to keep from breaking into hysterical laughter, snickering into his palm. 

“We’re good,” Mike says, smacking the side of the car. “Drive safe. Lots of precious cargo back there.”

“Oh my god,” Jay says, still laughing. “Shut up.” 

Mike winks at him and walks off. Jay shuts the door and watches Mike walk back into the garage as the Uber pulls out on the street. He wonders what the rest of Mike’s day will be like. Will he just hang out with those cats? Will he call his ex-wife, who he’s still friends with, and warn her that their gossipy neighbors are going to come to her with news of Mike’s one night stand? Surely that’s how they’ll see it. Mike and Jay rolled up around one in the morning, and Jay left in the same clothes he entered in. Though probably the people who live out here weren’t up and watching the comings and going on their street at one in the morning. 

“What’s all that stuff?” the Uber driver asks. “You going on a trip?”

“Yeah,” Jay says, not wanting to get into it. 

“Says you’re getting dropped off downtown, you didn’t mean the airport?”

“No, just-- No.” Jay gets out his phone so the guy will stop talking to him. He opens a text to Mike, and his thumbs are still hovering over the screen when one from Mike pops onto it. 

_you still owe me a date cheapo_   
_that didn’t count_

_Fine_ , Jay sends back, his heart lifting. _Where and when?_

 _stay tuned_ , Mike sends.

Jay rolls his eyes, but he’s excited, which is ridiculous. Everything about Mike’s life makes him want to run away, but everything about Mike himself feels like exactly what he needs. Reconciling the two is going to be a huge pain in the ass, and not in the fun way.

*


	6. Chapter 6

At home, Jay showers and eats at his desk while he reviews the footage from the wedding. He doesn’t really have a lunch meeting, just needed an excuse to run and doesn’t regret it now that he’s back in his pristine and familiar environs, with all the weird smells of someone else’s life washed off of him. He starts with the footage from Mike’s camera. It’s good stuff, and there are three instances that make Jay blush, and which should also make him angry because he can’t use them. They’re zoom-ins on Jay while he’s working, like little inside joke easter egg compliments that Mike packed in, knowing Jay would see them later. They’re brief enough that Jay can’t be mad about it. He doesn’t want to find this kind of goofy, unprofessional behavior cute, but maybe he’s been too long starved of cuteness, because he’s all fluttery and distracted after each one. 

Which is the reason he doesn’t do relationships. He gets about a quarter of the work he should have finished done that afternoon, distracted by checking his phone too many times and rewatching the clips that Mike shot of him, analyzing the way Mike filmed him to try to figure out how Mike feels about him. This is all going down a bad road. He thinks of Mike’s ex-wife’s things still shoved into his bathroom cabinets years after she moved out, and her artwork still on his walls, and that comment about what the neighbors will tell her. Then he’s even worse off and more distracted, the giddiness burning off like haze over the ocean, allowing merciless scrutiny to pound the flat surface that reflects everything he’s feeling back at him with too much glare.

But it’s just one date, he thinks. And he probably won’t like it. He’ll say something to make Mike mad and it will put him off the whole thing. Not on purpose. It will just happen, and Jay will be crushed. 

Because he really likes Mike, and wants Mike to continue liking him. It’s a horrible feeling, taking him right back to that party he dreamed about while sleeping in Mike’s arms, which is such a clear bad omen that even Jay, who doesn’t believe in omens of any kind, has to acknowledge it. 

The afternoon passes without any further communication from Mike, and Jay is trying not to feel twitchy about it as evening falls. He rarely feels weird for having no plans at night on weekends, but something about tonight is bugging him. He calls up Jack to check in on his son’s condition and apologize for being pushy the day before. Jack is affable and forgiving, but it’s also clear that he’s not interested in continuing to work for Jay’s company much longer.

“I thought there would be less to do as the kids got older,” Jack says. “Now I have no idea why I thought that.” 

“It’s fine,” Jay says, and, “I understand,” though of course he can’t. At present he feels, uncomfortably, like he has all the time in the world and always will.

“I’ll stick it out through the summer,” Jack says. “I don’t want to leave you high and dry.”

“I might have found your replacement, actually,” Jay says, thinking of Mike. “But I’m not sure yet, so. Yeah, I appreciate it.”’

He hangs up with Jack and thinks about texting Tori to apologize, then decides it can wait and puts his phone away, determined not to touch it for the full two hours he spends watching a Fulci movie and snacking on things from his fridge for dinner, too jittery to go out and too listless to order in. At nine o’clock, the sun is setting and he still has no text from Mike about their forthcoming date.

Which is normal and fine and not something he wants to or should be thinking about at all. He gets drunk off gin and tonics to take his mind off things, which turns out to be the wrong move, because this somehow leads to him Googling Mike’s ex-wife, whose name he now knows, which leads him to an old website with guest-focused info about her and Mike’s wedding and registry, a free hosted thing that for some reason is still online ten years after the wedding. There’s a picture of the then-happy couple and a few paragraphs about how they met. Mike’s ex is a former folk singer, of all things, and by all accounts from Mike and Google has never had a real job. She now lives in Las Vegas with Len the martial artist, which is another miserable online rabbit hole Jay falls down, leading him to pictures of their dogs and their vacation in Malta. Who the fuck actually lives in Vegas? Why does he care? Their house is huge and tacky. 

When he’s at peak self-pity and Mike still hasn’t called or texted, he makes himself get offline before he can start searching for certain people from college. He’s going to have a headache in the morning, when he really does have a breakfast meeting with a client. He sets his alarm and gets in bed, wondering why Mike didn’t call him. He remembers too late that he’d said he would call Mike after the client meeting that he didn’t actually have. Now he’s drunk and falling asleep and he can deal with it in the morning, maybe.

He wakes up feeling like shit, and his vague idea that he could both work with and date Mike seems absolutely insane. Mike probably isn’t interested in that kind of freelancing anyway, or for that matter in chasing after the likes of Jay for very long. He’s just going through a post-divorce thing, clearly, and Jay doesn’t need to be anybody’s rebound boyfriend, especially if he’s only a stepping stone before Mike moves on to some new woman, probably somebody who’d be happy to clean up Mike’s cluttered life and take care of him while he works his odd jobs to support them both. That’s what guys like him are looking for, after getting the weird sex with guys like Jay out of their system. 

He’s in a terrible mood at his breakfast meeting and tries to be chipper and sunny for his client, his stomach too torn up for anything more than an egg white omelette and water. He needs coffee but knows it would make his hands shake, so he avoids it until he says goodbye to the client and stops at coffee shop around the corner, sweating under his shirt. It’s going to be such a long, gruelling summer. He used to love summer, but now it just means more work, longer days that mean the nights he spends working alone in his apartment feel longer, too, and nothing, just-- Nothing new. He looks at his phone and tells himself he should call or at least text Mike, that it’s his turn. But he hates the concept of turns and having to know when to take one. 

He just wants-- He doesn’t even know anymore. He feels ill. Maybe spending the night in Mike’s dumpy townhome made him physically sick. 

He’s in his car and on the highway before he’s really made any decision about where he’s going. Planes landing overhead get bigger and bigger as he approaches the airport and the warehouse district where the VCR repair shop sits. Maybe he can pretend he has a machine that needs fixing, that he just had to come tell them about it in person right away and couldn’t bring it with him for some reason. Possibly only Rich will be there. Maybe that’s even what he’s hoping for when he pulls into the lot and straightens his tie, checking his hair in the rearview mirror. 

This is what a psychopath does, he thinks, reaching for the handle on the shop’s front door. Just showing up, desperate, unutterably falling apart over nothing. He might as well show Mike what he’s really like upfront, and peel the band-aid off fast. 

The light inside the shop is so much softer than the glare of sun outside that it takes him a few blinks to register that Mike is sitting behind the counter alone, his hands on the old computer keyboard and just resting over the keys like he was in mid-type when Jay walked in. Mike looks surprised, confused, and then he’s smiling sort of sympathetically, like he knew it would come to this. 

“I just realized I forgot to call you yesterday,” Jay says, feeling like he’s going to pass out. Contrary to the temperature of his home, Mike has the air con in the shop absolutely blasting, and it feels wonderful across the back of Jay’s neck.

“You’re all dressed up,” Mike says. 

“I’m just coming from another meeting. My life is meetings and editing and weddings. I own a lot of ties.” 

“Do you wear them when you edit?” 

“No. Where’s Rich, uh. Is it just you here?”

“Yeah, he’s off today. We’re usually slow on Mondays. C’mere, are you okay?”

Jay opens his mouth to say that of course he is, then doesn’t bother. He walks over to sit in the chair beside Mike’s, where Rich was sitting when Jay first walked in. It’s a tall wooden stool-style chair, and it’s surprisingly comfortable. Jay keeps his gaze pointed at the front door and listens to his heartbeat pounding between his ears while Mike just stares at him, waiting to find out what the fuck this is. Jay isn’t sure himself. 

“Do you need a beer or something?” Mike asks. 

“Is that your answer for everything? What time is it?”

“Uhh, almost eleven thirty.” 

“Fine, yes. I do need one.” 

Mike gets up and walks over to kiss the side of Jay’s head before disappearing into the back room. Jay loosens his tie and unbuttons his cuffs, rolling his sleeves up to his elbows. 

“Aw,” Mike says when he returns with two cold beer bottles, passing one to Jay.

“What?” Jay asks, staring up at him, feeling pathetic. 

“Nothing. You look cute. Look, uh. I feel like we did all this backwards. We can start over from the top if you want.”

“I don’t want to start over.” Jay drinks from his beer, and Mike takes this as his cue to sit back down and peer at him worriedly, just holding his own bottle. “Can I tell you a really stupid story?” Jay asks. 

“Yes,” Mike says. “I told you, I want to hear all your stories.”

Jay stares at him, not sure he actually did tell Jay that exactly. Maybe he did, and Jay just didn’t hear it the way Mike wanted him to. He drinks some more and sighs. 

“When I was in college,” Jay says, already wincing. “My first ever girlfriend broke up with me, which I’ve told you about. And it was awful because I loved her and wanted to be with her and make our stupid movies together, but she was right that our relationship was a joke. She thought I was in love with this other girl, which I wasn’t-- Anyway, this is boring, this whole story is boring and laughable, but I feel like you should know it, uh. One night after I’d had this awful fight with my ex, because we were still trying to work together, and I just felt like shit, I decided to go to this random frat party on campus.”

“Oh god,” Mike says, looking preemptively horrified.

“No-- See, yeah, I know what you’re thinking when you hear that. But unfortunately it was, like, the best night of my life.” 

“Um. Okay?”

Jay groans and holds the cold beer bottle against his forehead, which is burning already. This is such an embarrassing story. He’s never told anyone. 

“So, yeah,” Jay says, and he sighs again before continuing. “I was just like, fuck it, nothing matters, my art is a joke, I’m a friendless loser, I’ll wander into this huge house party I wasn’t invited to and will get wasted alone and everyone will ignore me. And I remember my heart slamming like they were going to identify me as an interloper when I walked in, but everyone just looked over my head like I was a ghost. So I went to the table with all the booze and this guy hands me a big red Solo cup full of cheap vodka and Sprite. I didn’t like drinking and had barely even had a few beers through all of college, mind you.” 

“Aww,” Mike says. “Really?”

“Yes-- Well, I was underage! At least until the start of junior year, which was right around when all this happened. And I pretended to be all punk and fearless as a filmmaker or whatever, but I was super into following the rules. Anyway, of course I got drunk right away, and this guy walked over to me and was like, are you in Sigma Phi? And I was like, I don’t know what that is, and he laughed. And he was really cute, like. Really cute.”

Jay drinks more beer, feeling like that idiotic kid again, talking his dumb ass off while a cute guy patiently listens. 

“I told him I was in the film program, and he said that was cool, he was a history major and his dad wanted him to be a lawyer, because his dad was a lawyer, but he didn’t really want that-- I don’t remember a lot of what we talked about at first, mostly movies and mundane college shit, I don’t know, but we got drunk together and talked all night. We ended up in the backyard at this frat house, lying on this pool float, and we held hands and kissed a little. I remember it felt like the punkest thing I’d ever done, making out with a guy at a nasty frat party. And everything about finally getting with a guy was so different and new and amazing, I was ready to die for it if I had to. He was a good kisser, like. He showed me that kissing could be good. And I was like, this is it. I love this guy. This is what falling in love feels like, like a fucking miracle, and it’s happening to me, somehow.”

“Is this about to get really dark?” Mike asks, looking physically pained at the thought.

“No, it never gets dark. That’s the thing. It was like, romantic. Nobody saw us or gave a shit, I guess. We were kind of in our own little world. And then at some point I fell asleep on that pool float, and when I woke up he was gone, and the sun was starting to come up, and a big frat guy with a trash bag was like, ‘wake up, kiddo, party’s over,’ and he kind of gently shooed me off their property while I stumbled around feeling like I barely knew what was real and what had been a dream. I only knew the guy’s first name, and that he was a history major, and that he’d left me asleep like that which seemed kinda cruel, but I still wanted to find him and see, just. If any of it had mattered to him like it had to me. I’d sobered up a little after we’d first started talking, and we’d mostly stopped drinking, so I remembered a lot of what we talked about, eventually. It felt special, like. We whispered to each other about our dad angst. That kind of shit. And every time I’d think, maybe it’s just me, he’d lean over and give me a little kiss like he knew I was feeling insecure and wanted to reassure me.”

“Aw,” Mike says, still looking pained. “So what happened?” 

“Nothing. I tried to figure out his last name, but I couldn’t. It was a big state school, and there wasn’t, like, a directory of juniors by major. It was like I’d dreamed the whole thing, but I would search for him everywhere, all over campus, and it still felt kinda dreamy and special, because I would think, what if he’s searching for me, too? What if he woke up and freaked out, because that was his first time dipping his toe into being with a guy, too, which was one thing we talked about-- And what if he regrets leaving like that and wants to find me? I’d walk past that frat house all the time, but they were never having a big all-comers house party again, just like smaller stuff that I clearly wouldn’t be welcome at, and he had just shown up there randomly after seeing the party from the street like I had, he wasn’t even in a frat. Anyway-- I’m making this too long, uh. Eventually I did cross paths with him, just walking randomly on campus between classes. And he was with these jock-looking guys, and our eyes met, and he probably saw me light up at the sight of him like a fucking dork, because he jerked his gaze away and walked past and pretended not to know who I was. Or maybe he really didn’t, but. I’m pretty sure I saw this shock of recognition in his eyes, and I knew he wanted nothing do with me.”

Mike stays quiet when Jay glances over him at him. He looks sad, and hasn’t finished much of his beer, the bottle resting against his knee while he listens to Jay’s story. 

“I don’t know why I’m telling you this,” Jay says, though he does, and that makes it worse, harder. “But, um. I got obsessed with this guy, kinda, but only from afar, because I had no delusions that he ever wanted to speak to me again and he was dating this hot volleyball player girl, and eventually he did come out I guess, ‘cause now he’s married to a dude and living with him in Minneapolis, but the point is that after all this happened I felt like a hundred times worse about myself, because clearly he’d tried things out with me at that party just ‘cause he was drunk and I was obviously a person who could be used and discarded and who wouldn’t fuck up his social life, and then when my professor came onto me after all this I thought, sure, at least it won’t be about my feelings, only he later completely eviserated me by calling me talentless white trash after I tried to insult him by implying he was a dirty old man who preyed on his students, which he was, but the thing he said about me felt true, too, so I left school, uh. Anyway. I feel like I’m losing my mind, lately, I guess, which is why I’m here telling you this like a moron.”

Jay chugs down the rest of his beer without looking at Mike, then peeks over at him. Mike looks stunned but his eyes are soft, and he’s twisting the beer bottle between his big hands. 

“So this is the equivalent of me showing you my dirty townhouse full of my ex’s shit,” Jay says, a little sharply, when Mike just sits there. “I don’t actually have one of those, except in the sense that the dirty townhouse full of old shit is me, myself, so. Which is worse, I know.”

“Can I show you something, actually?” Mike says. He’s peeling at the label on his beer bottle, keeping his eyes locked on Jay. 

“Sure,” Jay says. He puts his empty bottle on the counter. “Is it here?”

“Yeah, in the back room. Are you busy, uh. Do you have a free hour?”

“I’m free for the rest of the day,” Jay says, curious and wary. He’s not sure what he expected in response to that long, humiliating tale, but it wasn’t just to be taken in the back room and shown something, maybe Mike’s cock. 

Mike has Jay sit on an old sofa across from a TV in the back room. There’s a VCR plugged into it, presumably for work-related reasons. Mike opens a file cabinet near his cluttered desk with a key. He pulls out a VHS tape.

“I have this on my computer at home, too,” he says, unsheathing the tape. Jay can’t read the label, but it looks like a home video with a handwritten title. “But, uh. I keep this copy here, and I feel like maybe it’ll work best in its original format.” He slides the tape into the VCR and turns on the TV.

“Is this porn?” Jay asks, twisting his hands between his knees, not sure what’s happening.

“No,” Mike says. “It’s this movie I won an award for a long time ago. I just wanted to show it to you, um. I want to show you everything, it’s weird. Even my gross house.”

“It’s not--”

“No, it kinda is, I need to get a new place. Anyway, just. Watch this with me, please.”

Mike sits on the couch beside Jay, close enough for their shoulders to settle together when they lean back onto the cushions. Jay feels mildly buzzed from chugging a beer before noon. He feels okay, surprisingly, with all of this. It helps that Mike is warm and close and smells good as usual. 

Mike’s student film stars Mike when he was much thinner with a full head of hair, playing a movie star who is forced by the studio to spend the day with his young co-star, an adolescent actor who plays the younger version of his character in a feature film that has yet to start shooting. The director wants them to bond so the characterization will feel cohesive. The movie star guy played by Mike is an arrogant drunk who clearly shouldn’t be trusted with a child, especially while driving a convertible around L.A. between stops at the homes of acquaintances who give him booze, but he’s charming in a darkly comic way, and the kid in the film is a decent actor, playing well off Mike, who is surprisingly decent actor himself. 

Though maybe Jay shouldn’t be too surprised, considering how good Mike is at improvising dialogue when they’re fucking.

“You shot this in L.A.?” Jay asks when they’re about halfway into the movie and leaning against each other at the center of the sofa, holding hands. Mike reached for Jay’s hand while the title credits were still rolling, and he’s been squeezing hard at intervals, usually when they’re watching him act onscreen. 

“I went to film school in L.A.,” Mike says. It’s the one thing he hasn’t talked much about. Jay has long had the feeling it’s a sensitive subject. 

“Wow,” Jay says, as if he didn’t already know this from his Googling.

“It’s not really something I’m proud of,” Mike says. “But I still like this one movie. Nobody, uh-- It’s been a long time since I’ve shown it to anyone, like. A really long time.”

Jay is quiet for the remainder of the movie, which is touching and well-shot, sad but not depressing. When the end credits roll he looks over at Mike, who is still watching the screen.

“I loved that,” Jay says, and Mike looks at him. 

“Really?” 

“Uh-huh. You do really good character work. That was always important to me, too. If I’d known you back then, I’d have been drooling to work with you.”

Mike grins, and the heel of his foot starts bouncing on the floor. 

“I want to see yours,” Mike says, whispering this like it’s dirty.

“You will,” Jay says. “Eventually. They’re bad.”

“I’m sorry that happened to you. In college, um. I’m sorry it made you not want to try again.”

“The fucked up part is that I wasn’t even trying, that one time it felt good,” Jay says. “It just happened to me, and then it was over and gone and I had nothing again. I always thought-- It’ll either happen again, without me trying, or it won’t, and if it does, I should expect to lose it this time.”

“Mhm.”

“Can I tell you something?” Jay asks, pulling his legs up onto the couch so that his knees are resting on Mike’s gut.

“Yes,” Mike says. He puts his arm around Jay’s shoulders and reaches down to tickle the soft skin inside the bend of his elbow, just under where his shirt sleeve is rolled up.

Jay swallows and drops his gaze to Mike’s throat so he can get this out. 

“I always feel so good around you,” he says. “I think you make me happy.”

“Do you need me to tell you I won’t disappear?” Mike asks. 

“No. That would be patronizing.” 

Mike snorts and leans over to press his face to Jay’s. Jay can feel Mike’s eyelashes on his cheek, and the warm flush of his skin. He opens his mouth for the press of Mike’s tongue to his lips and closes his eyes, lets Mike kiss him. 

“I really liked your movie,” Jay says when Mike presses him down to the couch. Mike is taking Jay’s tie off and straddling his hips, already breathing harder. 

“Thanks,” Mike says. “Watching it kinda feels like having my skin stripped off with a potato peeler. But it’s also my favorite thing I’ve ever done. It’s weird.”

“I know,” Jay says, staring up at him. 

“I know you do. You make me happy, too, you little weirdo. Can I take you on a fucking date tonight or what?”

“Mhm-hmm,” Jay says, pulling him close. “Yes, yeah, please, just-- Take anything you want.” 

Mike takes Jay’s clothes off. He doesn’t shut the back room door, doesn’t even go out front to turn the OPEN sign around or lock the shop up. Jay doesn’t care. He told Mike to take anything, and he meant it, and he feels so strangely safe here. 

“Can I tell you something weird?” Mike asks when he’s rooting around in a different locked drawer near his desk, until he comes up with a bottle of lube. 

“Always,” Jay says. “Is it why you have lube at the VCR repair shop?”

“No-- Well, I used to jerk off to gay porn here after locking up, but that’s not what I wanted to tell you.”

Jay snickers and reaches for Mike, sighing with contentment as Mike settles over him again. Mike has taken off everything except the undershirt he wears under his Lightning Fast shirt, apparently still insecure about his gut. Jay can work with that. He’ll make Mike love it as much as Jay does, if he can. 

“I’m jealous of that boy in your story,” Mike says. “Which is stupid.”

“I’m jealous of your ex-wife,” Jay says, thinking of his awful adventures online last night. “Which is stupider.”

“Can you at least admit that both of these things are true because we seem to belong together and we’re annoyed that someone else wasted the time of the person who should have always been ours?”

“Um, no.” Jay snickers at the look Mike gives him. “What? I don’t believe in that stuff.”

“Not even now?”

Jay shrugs. “Ask me again in a year,” he says, probably unwisely.

Lack of wisdom notwithstanding, he needs Mike to know this is where he wants to be in a year: underneath him, legs spread, kissing him wildly and doing this irresponsible thing that feels so good in the middle of a work day, just letting all his bullshit fall away in favor of trusting Mike to keep making him feel good.

They have a quick, non-creative fuck on the scummy old couch, and it feels amazing, maybe because of the thrill of doing it in Mike’s workplace. It’s also possible that just having Mike’s big dick inside him is the basic but undeniable epiphany of Jay’s sexual life. He’s had big things in there before, but the effect is different when he’s falling in love with the person putting the big thing into him, turns out. 

Afterward they lie together talking on the couch, Jay wearing Mike’s VCR repair shop shirt and Mike still in his undershirt, his bare ass turned toward the open back room door, which is at least hidden from the front door by the high counter out there, should anyone suddenly stroll inside. Jay tells Mike more about the movies he used to make with Tori, to prepare him for watching them. It’s one subject Jay avoided on their phone conversations, because it felt too painful, but now nothing seems out of bounds or like it could hurt him the way it used to.

He’s had this feeling once before, on that pool float, next to that boy who taught him kissing could be good and then abandoned him. There are stabs of rational objection trying to break through Jay’s sense of invincibility, telling him that he’s had this feeling before and that it proved to be untrue. He can’t let that spoil this, because it’s different. He’s older, maybe tougher, and he and Mike worked backwards toward this sweetness, which may prove to be the secret formula. 

Also, Mike is different. He’s not that boy. He’s not like anybody Jay has ever known before. Jay might be fooling himself, but he thinks he can see it in Mike’s big eyes, where nothing is guarded or hidden or fake. 

Mike falls asleep after a while. Jay pets his face and takes the opportunity to admire him, feeling possessive and protective. There’s a storm starting up outside, thunder rumbling closer from a distance. Jay likes the stuck-in-time smell of the shop, and the way the rough fabric of Mike’s work shirt feels against his skin. It’s so big that it covers Jay’s ass, which is a cold comfort when he hears the shop’s front door opening and someone walking inside.

“Mike!” Jay says through his teeth, shaking Mike’s shoulder until he wakes up with a snort. 

“You still have the door open?” Rich says, shouting this from the front room. “It’s past six-- Oh, fuck, okay.”

Rich whirls around after he spots Mike scrambling to fully reassemble his consciousness and Jay dashing for the shop’s tiny bathroom while holding Mike’s shirt around himself. Jay waits there with his heart pounding, listening to Rich and Mike talking out in the front of the shop, presumably after Mike has put his pants back on. A minute or so later, there’s a soft knock on the bathroom door. Mike pokes his head inside and hands Jay his clothes.

“Sorry,” Mike says. “It’s okay-- Rich didn’t see your dick.”

“Oh my god, did you _ask_ him if he did?”

“Uhhh--”

“Never mind, just-- Gimme a second.”

Jay gets dressed and emerges, red-faced. Rich seems disinterested beyond waving hello before getting back to whatever work he’s doing on the computer at the front counter. Mike is drinking a beer, leaning in the back room’s doorway.

“Sorry I interrupted,” Rich says, eyes on his computer screen. “I just had to email myself these plans.”

“It’s fine,” Jay says, standing close to Mike. “Sorry we were, uh. Doing that, here.”

“Eh.”

“Are you hungry?” Mike asks. He settles his hand at the small of Jay’s back and rubs him there, apologetic. “We could grab a bite to eat.”

“Yeah, sounds good,” Rich says, as if Mike was asking him. 

Which is how Jay ends up having his first date with Mike alongside Rich, who joins them at Culver’s for butterburgers. It’s kind of perfect, and Jay holds Mike’s hand under the table when Mike reaches over to shyly brush his fingers against Jay’s.

“Mike refuses to tell me how you two met,” Rich says after they’ve been shooting the shit about less sensational subjects for a while. “He says it’s personal,” Rich says, cutting his gaze from Jay to Mike and then back again. 

“Rich, please,” Mike says, going pink across his cheeks, his fingers twitching between Jay’s under the table. “It’s a long story.” 

“Does the story involve glory holes?” Rich asks, and he cackles at his own joke when Mike gives him a murderous look. Jay just snickers into his hand and wonders how they’ll ever explain. Probably they just won’t. No one needs to know the story except the two of them. 

*

By the end of the summer Jay’s life looks the same on the surface but feels very different. He’s still running ragged doing shoots and edits for the busy wedding season, now with Mike as his regular camera operator. His apartment is occasionally less pristine than he’d like, because Mike spends most nights there and can’t seem to grasp the importance of putting coffee cups or shirts away instead of just leaving them wherever, but for the most part all of his things are still where he wants them, and having Mike there means he gives less of a shit about petty things like rings on the glass top of his coffee table. Mike is trying to sell his townhouse, so far with no success, even after Jay helped him clean it out, which was a huge project and a lot of work but weirdly satisfying for both of them. They haven’t talked precisely about where Mike will live if he does sell it. Jay doesn’t want to say that he already wants Mike to move in with him, cats and all, because that’s crazy, but it’s true. 

Even crazier than that is that they’ve started talking about making a movie together. They both approach the subject with bashful caution whenever it comes up, as if it’s a question of marriage or even moving in together, something sensitive and huge. Once they let themselves get going on the hypotheticals they can talk for hours, sometimes making notes toward a screenplay, one of them getting out of bed in the middle of the night to fetch a pen and paper or the iPad, depending on who’s doing the transcribing. Mike favors the pen and paper, despite hating his handwriting. Jay will type up Mike’s handwritten notes in the morning, without telling him, adding them to the growing document that could someday become a movie. 

Stranger things have happened. Jay has even started to enjoy topping on occasion, something he never thought he’d feel comfortable doing with anyone. There’s too much potential for failure for him to enjoy it, typically, and the work involved was never something he was interested in, until it was work he was doing for Mike, who never laughs at Jay’s attempts to be toppy, even when they’re deserving of it. 

Jay has gotten two calls from Greta at the club, inquiring politely about the fact that he’s made no appointments in the past two months. Jay brushed her off the first time and let the second call go to voicemail. Hopefully they’ll stop harassing him. He’ll probably let his membership fee lapse at the end of the year. Mike doesn’t want to share him. Jay never thought he would like being told that someone wants to possess him and take care of his needs exclusively and on a permanent basis. There are lots of things he’s been surprised to discover he likes since he started calling Mike his boyfriend.

In bed, for example: he likes taking Mike off guard with weird shit that will either make him choke on his breath and come or laugh like Jay is a lunatic. Sometimes Jay can accomplish both, one right after the other, such as when it randomly occurs to him to say ‘hurry up and fuck me, Michael’ impatiently after Mike has done a little too much teasing of Jay’s ass with his dick in an attempt to last longer. 

“Why was that so hot?” Mike asks after he’s unloaded all over Jay for it, still laughing and breathless while Jay rolls against him. 

“I dunno,” Jay says. “You’re the one who came when I said it, you tell me.” 

“I can’t explain it,” Mike says. He pulls Jay into his arms and moans, his chest still bouncing with laughter as Jay curls up there. “You’re just such a little weirdo, god. I guess I get off on it.”

“No kidding.”

Sometimes sex feels like a game they’re playing, like there’s a scorecard and they’re both racking up points, with taking each other off guard for some new thing being worth the most points. At other times it just feels like the simplest comfort at the end of a long day, neither of them performing anything for the other, only clinging and saying the obvious things, like how good it feels, how they never want to stop, or just sighing out the other’s name like it’s the answer to some question they’re being asked. 

Jay knows what the question is, just before coming, when he’s arching back with his eyes closed and Mike’s big hands are braced around his hips: what were you waiting for, all that time, who was always going to be the only person who would ever make you feel this way, the reason no one else felt right. 

It flashes through him like a lightning strike, and relief rolls through him like the answering thunder when he says Mike’s name, over and over. 

  
*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Theme song, also my favorite new song I've discovered so far this year <3 <3:
> 
> [It Is What It Is](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JzBrCfqhE4)


End file.
